Headlights
by hallospacegirl
Summary: A modern day woman, Ada Cooper, wakes up in 1888 and must seek Holmes and Co. to find out what happened to her. Her fragmented memories and dreams will gradually reveal to all of them that nothing's what it seems.
1. Chapter One

Disclaimer: Holmes and Co. are not mine, even though, technically speaking, they have outlived their copyrights and are in public domain, mwahahaha, suckas. Ada Cooper's mine, though I see no reason why you would want her in the first place.  
  
Summary: Romance/Mystery/Angst. Holmes/OFC. A typical romance of a 21st century young woman, Ada Cooper, who goes back in time to the 19th century and meets up with Holmes. But wait, all is not what it seems. Ada's POV.  
  
**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter One  
  
They don't believe me. Nobody does. The short skinny detective sitting at the desk opposite me has been pounding the same questions into my ears for the last hour, as though he hasn't understood a single word I've said since they took me in here.  
The crude yellow light bulb crackles noisily above me as the rain outside splashes furiously into the dark empty streets, and a clock is ticking from a bookshelf nearby. The three young policemen in short black capes and round helmets who are standing beside the detective are swaying tiredly on their feet and stifling yawns behind gloved fists.  
"Now, madam, let us go through this again," the detective says to me, ignoring the restlessness of the policemen. He speaks in the condescending way a person would speak to a child, and dissects me with those beady black eyes like he's observing not a twenty three year old woman, but an unknown insect. "Where do you last remember being?"  
"I already told you." My throat is hoarse from the talking, but he doesn't offer me the pitcher of water on the desk. "I last remember being in San Francisco."  
"Three months ago."  
"No. More like three hours ago. Ten or eleven o'clock, I think it was. My band Durvasula and I were done playing our set at Joe's Club, and I was walking out of the club to my car, which was parked across the street. Then suddenly this other car with the bright white headlights came down the road and hit me. And I guess I was knocked unconscious, because the next thing I knew the driver with the horse and buggy was picking me off of the street and asking if I was all right. Look," I sigh, reaching for the pitcher and refilling my glass, "I already told you."  
"And yet what you say does not make the least bit of sense," he responds tightly. "For instance, you keep mentioning the word 'car.' I want you to describe this vehicle that hit you. Is it a landau? A hansom? A newfangled horseless road machine? Is there anything more you can tell us so that we can identify your assailant?"  
"A car! An automobile! It has four wheels and headlights and a windshield!" I snap after taking a long swig of the stale, lukewarm water. "I don't know what color it was because the headlights were too bright, and I don't know what type it was. A Lexus, a Toyota, a Ford. I don't know. I couldn't see clearly. But listen, I really don't care at this point as long as you tell me where I am and how to get home."  
The detective exhales thinly, and glances wearily down at the lines of writing he has jotted into his notebook. "This I already told _you_, madam, four times, I believe. We are in London, England on the evening of November 8, 1888."  
"Bullshit."  
He snaps his head back up sharply and frowns at me for a moment. "Madam, I do not jest."  
"And neither do I. I know where I was and what time it was when I had the accident. I was in San Francisco on the 8th of November, 2003. Now, I'm willing to believe I got hurt so badly you needed to transfer me to a hospital in England, and I'm willing to believe I slept through a couple of months of my life in a coma, but right now you're telling me that I'm a hundred years _before_ my current time. This I can't believe."  
"Yes, and rightly so. I'm not asking you to believe such preposterous notions. I'm asking you take into account the possibility that the accident has perhaps damaged your brain and made your memories slightly... unstable for the moment."  
I let out a short, bitter snort at the detective's words as I take in the sight of his parted black hair and dark three-piece suit and overcoat. He's so far from the ripped baggy jeans and tee shirts I know so well that for the briefest of seconds I wonder if jeans and tee shirts are figments from my imagination that have been created in my brain by the crash with the horse and buggy.  
No, it was a car that hit me, not a horse and buggy. Joe's Club is real. Mudd jeans are real, and so are Hot Topic tee shirts, and so are electric guitars, and so is my band Durvasula, and so is Mark and James and Tony. I can still smell his cigarette traces clinging to the black lace of my blouse.  
I slap my palm down on the table. "Stop trying to mess with me!" I explode at the skinny little man. "I know where I am! I'm in San Francisco, California, on November 8, 2003! And I'm not insane!"  
"Madam, please. I did not say you are," he replies hastily, "but it is God's truth when I say you are in London in the year 1888."  
"You expect me to think that I made up the next hundred years in my mind? You expect me to think that a crash with a horse and buggy made me invent cars and CD players and the Internet?"  
"I'm simply telling you the truth, madam."  
I screw my eyes shut and feel tears, thickened by the layers of ruined makeup and mascara, slide down my face. "This is a sick joke, isn't it? You must be one of Tony's friends, and this place must be some studio back lot in Los Angeles. Any minute now the lights are going to come back on, and everything's going to be normal again."  
"We are in London in the year 1888."  
"_Look _at me!" I snarl, pointing to myself. "Do I look like I come from 1888?"  
The detective blinks once. "Yes. You are wearing a black silk dress and a corset. The neckline of your dress is quite... daring... but I suppose this particular cut is the trend among the fashionable young women of this time. Am I right, Sergeant?"  
The bleary eyed man standing beside the detective lowers his chin in a drowsy nod. "I've seen similar."  
"Thank you, Sergeant." The detective turns back to me.  
"I'm in a Goth rock band! I've already told you ten times! The band is called Durvasula, and these are our performance costumes, which are copied from nineteenth century Victorian dresses! This is a modern dress, made with modern materials!"  
"Yes, quite right."  
I stare at him lamely. "You don't believe me."  
"In all honesty you leave me at a loss, madam. You've told me tales and used vocabulary that are altogether fantastic to my humble ears."  
"No, I think you're telling me that I'm either insane, or that I traveled back in time from the twenty first century, detective," I whisper, holding my damp, smeared face in my hands. The heavy foundation, powder, lipstick, and eye shadow have certainly been spoiled by the rain and my intermittent fits of crying, and I'm glad that there's no mirror in sight. "God, I'm not insane, all right?"  
"Madam, please calm yourself."  
"I don't know what's happening to me. I was there at Joe's Club and suddenly I'm here in London a hundred twenty years ago. Listen, I know this is impossible, and I would believe that I had a brain injury if I could, but I can't. _Because it's not true._ Everything in my memory is _real_, all right? And no one believes me! If you would, or at least someone would only believe me a little bit, or at least pretend to, maybe I won't be so fucking scared!"  
For a suspended moment, the detective is silent, and I can hear his shallow breathing, mingling with the quiet, impatient rustles of the policemen next to him, the flat ticking of the clock, and the muted splattering of the rain outside.  
When the skinny man speaks again his voice is resigned and tired. "You want to appeal your case to someone else?"  
"Yes."  
"Then I think, madam," he resumes carefully, "that I might know just the man whom you seek."

..........  
  
The ride in the carriage through the rainy London streets scares me with its reality. The flickering flames of the gaslights illuminate the wet black cobblestone lanes in a blotchy, inconsistent light.  
The windows of the buildings crammed to either side of the street are dark. I long to hear muffled sounds of late night television coming through the rooms, or maybe see a fierce beam of modern electric lighting seep through the curtains, but all I can find is the occasional candlelit window mottled with blurry silhouettes of the inhabitants within.  
The carriage passes by several drunks and women in shabby gowns, and I stare at them, hoping to catch a glimpse of sneakers or jeans or parkas or anything that would stick out of their costumes to reveal to me the fakeness of this London world.  
All I see is the yellow, feverish eyes of a bearded man who smiles gapingly at me as we fly by in our carriage.  
I lean back in the leather seat and let the tears tumble silently down my face. San Francisco, I think. Damn you, Tony, and damn me too, for drinking the wine that he offered in his hands as I finished the last song and stepped from the tiny stage. And damn me for letting his mouth linger there on my cheek, my chin, my neck.  
"Drink from this, my poet, and you won't regret it," I remember him whispering as a wisp of cigarette smoke escaped from the corners of his lips.  
And then I must have said, "I'm sorry, Tony, but you're no vampire," because the last distinct words I remember him saying to me were, "I know." And I drank his wine until my mind reeled with oblivion.  
As we danced together, the music from the next upcoming underground band filling the club with dissonant static, he whispered to me words upon words that seemed to meld with the music, and I giggled, laughed, nodded wildly. When the song ended I said to him, "Yes, of course."  
Yes, of course. And then there was the car, and then the blinding headlights more glaring than anything I have ever seen before. And then the cold, midnight London streets. I frown through my tears.  
What was it that I said yes to?  
I can remember nothing past his simple declaration of "I know." My mind must have been changed and lost in the wine.  
"We are here, madam." The clear voice of the detective cuts through the monotony of the carriage wheels rattling against the cobblestones.  
I look at him to see that he is pointing at a nondescript house on the side of the street, with the numbers 221b inscribed over a low, dark doorway.  
"Who is it that you're taking me to see?" I ask as the carriage slows and jerks to a stop. My own voice rasps and grates out of my mouth. "Is he a psychiatrist? I don't need to speak to any psychiatrists."  
"He is a detective of sorts."  
"Like you?"  
The skinny man regards me with an expression I can't read. "No. No, Sherlock Holmes is nothing like me. Now come along." He flings open the door of the carriage, steps to the curb, and holds up his whitely gloved hand to me. I stand unsteadily and stumble out of the carriage without taking it.  
"I don't need help," I say. "I need answers."  
"Then you will undoubtedly be delighted," he replies, "to find that Sherlock Holmes is a man of little help and plenty of answers, however accurate or far fetched they may be."  
We pass through the doorway and up a short flight of narrow stairs, to a single door lit orange by a small gaslight in the wall. The thin man brings his sharp knuckles to the door and raps three times. When there is no answer the man calls, "Holmes? Holmes, this is urgent."  
The door opens after a brief moment, and I'm engulfed in choking, sweet tobacco fumes. The man who stands in the doorway is tall and gaunt, his distinct features draped in sleepiness and the edges of his dark uncombed hair almost red from the light of a fireplace behind him. He wears a deep purple robe, and holds the end of a curved clay pipe between his teeth.  
"So, Lestrade," he says curtly around the pipe, "have you come to relay the wishes of the Scotland Yard for my assistance in deciphering the Whitechapel..." He sees me and stops. His deep-set gray eyes widen almost imperceptibly beneath arched eyebrows as he pivots away from the door and gestures with an elegant pale hand to the inside of his room. "Do come in, madam. You are tired and have traveled very far. We will talk by the fire over a cup of tea. I gather that there are many things you wish to tell me."  
I peer at this man called Holmes narrowly. "How do you know this?"  
"Your foreign attire, and the manner you unconsciously swallow as though there is something in your throat reveal many things to me. But never mind. Do come into the study."  
I gingerly step into the smoky warmth of the small, closely furnished room. Directly in front of me is a small dining table before of a velvet- curtained window, and further ahead, three or four armchairs around a blazing fireplace. Countless books, newspaper clippings, photographs, and papers are scattered among the odd decorations on the desk to the left of me. The sweetly pungent pipe smoke curls about the crimson, patterned wallpaper and ceiling like fog.  
"This way." The man Holmes takes me by the elbow and leads me into the study to a large beige armchair. "Please, sit."  
I do. The skinny detective named Lestrade, who has invited himself in after us, lowers himself now into a wicker chair beside me, and glances expectantly at Holmes with beady black pupils. "Well?"  
"Yes, Mr. Lestrade?"  
"What do you make of her?" He speaks as though I've stopped being an alien insect specimen and ceased to exist altogether. "What does your famed powers of deduction tell you? I am burning with curiosity, Mr. Holmes, because ever since Davenport the cabman found her lying prostrate in the street two hours ago, I have yet to make sense as to what has befallen her."  
"Perhaps the young lady will explain to you after a brief moment of rest from her trying ordeal, detective," Holmes says, walking to the dining table and picking up a tray of tea, some cups, and a platter of small cookies. He returns to the armchairs with his steely eyes pinning Lestrade in a thinly veiled accusatory glare, then lays the tray on the coffee table before me.  
I watch his gracefully shaped fingers pour the tea into two small cups and set the cookies onto matching saucers. "I urge you to refresh yourself before we begin our conversation," he says to me, handing me a teacup and a saucer of cookies. He folds his tall frame into the red armchair opposite me, then steeples his fingertips to his pipe and silently exhales a series of smoke rings.  
Under the quiet scrutiny of both men I devour a buttery cookie, rinsing it down with a mouthful of strong herbal tea, and wipe my lips with the lacy frills of my concert costume dress. I realize that not only was I parched in the bare interrogation room with Lestrade and the policemen, I was famished. I eat another cookie and finish off the dregs of my tea.  
"Thank you," I rasp, setting the empty dishes back on the tray.  
"More?" Holmes asks.  
"No, I'm fine now. Thanks."  
Lestrade clears his throat pointedly. "Can we begin? Holmes, listen with extra care to what this woman has to say."  
I rub my sore, reddened eyelids with my knuckles, no longer caring about the state of my makeup. "Look, Mr. Holmes, I'm not asking you to immediately believe what I'm going to tell you. I'm just asking you to listen the first time around with an open mind."  
"Why, of course," the man murmurs through his pipe and a cloud of smoke. "Listening is a basic skill of any competent detective." His steely gaze darts to Lestrade for a split second, who in turn stares at the ceiling in an open expression of exasperation.  
"For the love of God, Holmes."  
"Help yourself to some tea, Lestrade. Madam," he says to me, "you may begin when you feel ready."  
I nod shortly. "I guess I'll begin now. I might as well tell you the basics about myself. My name's Adeleine Cooper, but everyone calls me Ada. I work at a cafe in San Francisco and sing in an underground Goth rock band. I dropped out of the University of San Francisco in my junior year three years ago, and for that my parents and I don't talk much anymore. For that and a lot of other things too numerous to list." I lick my parched lips. "Anyway, I had a boyfriend named Tony, and he was the one who introduced me to the world of Goth rock, dark poetry, and self torture. He said it eased the pain of life. It didn't. I broke up with him, but I could never really leave. I was the singer of his band, singing all of his songs, and the more I sang them the more I realized no one else outside my dark shell could ever want and accept me. Tony and I... I hated him, but I couldn't leave him. It was like as if we were stuck together with superglue. But I'm not making any sense to you with my words, am I?"  
Holmes is staring back at me with a faraway, yet intense expression, and when I lapse into silence he vaguely waves a hand in the air for me to continue.  
"I don't even know why I'm telling you all this, Mr. Holmes. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that earlier tonight I drank some wine that Tony offered me that may or may not have been drugged, and I got drunk and walked in front of a car. It hit me and I was knocked unconscious. Now, I know you're going to ask me a thousand questions about what a car is and what a rock band is, so I'll just put it this way. When that car, that vehicle or horseless carriage or whatever you want to call it hit me, I was in San Francisco in the year 2003. Two hours later I woke up here, in London, in the year 1888."  
Holmes chews thoughtfully at the end of his pipe, frowning slightly but not speaking.  
"You're going to say I'm crazy," I offer.  
"No, no, no, Miss Cooper. Your account is truly... interesting."  
"You don't believe me."  
"At this moment I cannot say."  
A slow panic is gathering in my chest as I let my own words sink into my ears, and I choke out, "Look, Mr. Holmes, I don't know anything anymore. I don't know if you're real or if all this is real, or if the past twenty three years of my life was all a dream, or if we're like those people in that movie, _The Matrix_, and we're all living in tanks, but, oh God, I don't even know if _I'm_ real anymore!"  
My tears fall into my lap, leaving black spots on the dark silk of my gown.  
"If you please, madam," Lestrade begins uncomfortably.  
Holmes motions for him to be silent, and the next thing I know Holmes's dry, warm hands are clasped over mine. My panic falls at the touch, and my crying trickles to a quiet sniffle as I feel the firm and undeniably real pressure of his hands. I look into the serene aquiline features of his face, and quickly look to the mousy, slightly frazzled Lestrade, and then at the intricate expanse of the study.  
I can feel in my heart that all is real. As real as Tony and Durvasula and my two and a half years of study at the University of San Francisco.  
And I turn back to Holmes and almost laugh in relief. "This is all insane, but it's all real, isn't it? For some reason I was in the year 2003, and now I'm in 1888. I don't know how it happened, but it did."  
"Now is hardly the time to think of scientific explanations, Miss Cooper," Holmes replies gently. "You are tired, and need to sleep. I do not mind if you lodge in my good colleague Dr. Watson's room for the night, and we can resume our conversation tomorrow." He removes his hand from mine with a pat and leans back into his armchair. "What say you, Lestrade?" he asks the man beside me. "Care to join Miss Cooper, Dr. Watson and I tomorrow morning over Mrs. Hudson's breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage?"  
Lestrade appears distinctly disgusted. "I will have to kindly decline, detective," he answers in a clipped tone, and rises to his feet stiffly. "Good evening, Mr. Holmes. Good evening, Miss Cooper." He nods to Holmes and me in turn, marches to the door, and exits the study with a sharp slam of the door behind him.  
  
..........  
  
To be continued. In the meantime, please review!


	2. Chapter Two

Note: Forgot to write on the first chapter that this story will eventually be prancing off into the world of AU (alternate universe) so if you can't bear to stray from the Canon, I suggest you turn away! (Not like anyone's reading this in the first place, sniff. Review please?) Speaking of Canon, I'm not following it very carefully because, well, I'm just a lazy butt.  
  
**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter Two  
  
"The woman wants your autograph, my poet." It is Tony's voice shouting over the opening chords of the rock band that has just stepped onto the stage, and I know that I'm dreaming of a past that is somehow the future.  
"What woman?" my dream self questions. My body is writhing among the throng of undulating figures on the dance floor, a nearly empty wine glass in hand and Tony pressed against me.  
He says something that is drowned out in the music, and I tap my ear, shaking my head. I detach myself from his lustful, sweaty embrace and stalk away through the ribbons of dancers, but I know that he is close at my heel. He is always at my heel.  
When I reach the cluster of tables in the back I spin around to face him, and see that the colorful hypnotic disco lights are making a canvas of his wasted features. "And don't call me your poet. I'm no longer yours. I never was."  
"You only say that because you're drunk, Ada."  
"But isn't this the way you want me though? Drunk and under your spell?" I giggle loudly, my ribs aching against the masochistic corset and my throat hoarse from the howling lyrics that I belted out only a quarter of an hour ago. "I know you still want me to share the night with you, but face it Tony, I can't live the undead life with you anymore. I'm a human. And so are you, only you're too immature to admit it."  
"God, Ada, I know you hate me. But you dance so well when you're angry."  
I sip up what's left of the spicy red wine. "I'm going to leave Durvasula."  
"You said that last month and the month before."  
"This time I mean it. I don't want your bullshit of pleasure through pain. The scars on my arm haven't given me anything more than a hell of a time disguising them when I go to work in the morning, so fuck you, Tony, I'm fed up with this."  
"Ada, not now." He traps my wrist in his bulldog grip. "The autograph?" His other hand rustles a crinkled piece of paper in my face, and he smiles teasingly at me with his crooked smile.  
"Yes, that. Who wants it again?"  
He cocks his head to the table half hidden in shadows at the farthest end of the club. I follow his gesture and can barely distinguish the outline of a lone, slim woman, smoking a thin cigarette that sends a thread of smoke into the thick fog machine haze. "Why would she want my signature?"  
"She says you speak to her with your deadly but beautiful words."  
"My 'deadly but beautiful words' are all written by you. I only sing them," I slur out softly.  
"No, she doesn't mean our songs. She means your short stories, the ones you write and submit to those monthly online literary magazines."  
"Barely anyone knows about those. I'm a horrible writer."  
"Apparently she doesn't think so. Here, she wants you to sign a copy of your work." He offers me the sheet of paper, which is filled with paragraphs of dizzying text so small I can't make them out in the dark lighting. He then draws out from his back pocket an ink pen, which he places between my trembling fingers. "Sign. Sign or she'll be disappointed, Ada."  
I smooth the paper on the nearest table, uncap the pen, and complete the task. The song being butchered onstage wails to an end as I thrust the autographed paper back to Tony with a lilting, "Here you go."  
"I guess you'll be leaving now?" he asks in the ensuing relative quiet.  
I respond by laughing crassly into his face. The alcohol has made me too reckless to care about my actions. "Yes, of course, Tony," I declare triumphantly. "Yes, of course." And just to show him I mean it I stumble away from him with hardly a glance back.  
  
..........  
  
I wake to the sounds of a muted conversation sifting from the other side of the wall, and the events of the past twenty-four hours come rushing back to me. I don't open my eyes. I know that the tattered poster of Marilyn Manson is no longer above my bed to greet me, and I know that the radio alarm clock is no longer going to push me into my day with a tinny musical track and a glowing red 7:00 AM.  
I am in a strange room on a strange bed, huddled under a strange wool blanket that is soft enough, but oddly comfortless. My nose tingles as I detect the smell of fresh coffee, sausage and eggs mixing with the pervading scent of musky tobacco that seems to permeate through every pore of this house.  
November ninth, eighteen eighty-eight, I think. I'm smelling the smells of a hundred years ago.  
A snatch of an exclamation rises above the lulling murmur of the conversation in the next room: "But my dear Holmes, surely you don't believe everything she says!" and I'm instantly alert. They're talking about me. I scramble to a sitting position on the narrow wooden bed and press my ear to the moss green wallpaper.  
"She was sincere, Watson."  
"Did it occur to you that she was suffering from delusions, my good man? A cranial collision with a wheel of a hansom – and she admitted herself that she had been knocked unconscious – can create a jolly good amount of false memory."  
An impatient sigh. "Watson, my fine tuned observation would not have missed the sight of a bruised or bleeding skull. Other than a scattering of superficial scrapes on her person and the dreadful smearing of womanly products on her face, she was unharmed." A pause. "Do you mean to say you mistrust_ my_ judgment?"  
"Good God, Holmes, out of respect for our long standing friendship, I will choose not to reply to that."  
"And besides, what do you make of this?" I hear a thick rustle of fabric, and an audible gasp that undoubtedly came from the man whom Holmes described as his colleague, Watson.  
"Look here," Holmes continues without a pause, "at this metal contraption in the back. See?" I hear the sound of a zipper being pulled. "Her dress is held together by _mechanical teeth_ that fit together like gears! It is like nothing I have ever seen before!"  
"Holmes, you are indecent," Watson snaps. "You stole the young woman's dress. You can be sued and jailed for such acts of obscenity, you know."  
"I had not removed it _directly_ from her person, which is, as I recall, the only situation in which I can be sued and jailed. Last night, after she bathed and fell into sleep, I simply removed it from the back of her chair for my observations. But Watson, do pay attention to what I am showing you. Miniature metal teeth holding the fabric together! It is simply an invention beyond our – "  
"Yes, yes, I see what you're saying. But your alternative methods of detection, however accurate and ingenious they may be, sorely needs – "  
"She will not be offended, Watson," Holmes interrupts moodily. "She is not an Englishwoman."  
I raise an eyebrow at that. I peek down at my body beneath the covers, naked except for the scant lace thong that Tony orders me to wear for concerts, and tightly draw the covers up to my chin.  
"You have made exactly my point," Watson is saying. "She is not an Englishwoman. She hails from San Francisco, which at this time, I believe, is thriving after the discovery of gold in the eighteen forties. It is not out of the realm of possibility that one ingenious prospector may have invented these 'mechanical teeth' to fasten clothing."  
I imagine Holmes shaking his head in frustration. "No, Watson, no. I pray you listen to my line of reasoning for a moment, and you will soon acknowledge that you are in the wrong. You know that rather than gathering my deductions from large, obvious statements, I gather the most revealing facts from the smallest of objects. In this case, the mechanical teeth. If you examine through my lens the stitching along the sides, you will see that they have been hastily made by a sort of advanced sewing machine, perhaps mechanical. This shows that these contraptions are not being made as novelties, but are being _mass-produced_ in great amounts. Furthermore, the wear in the gears show that when Miss Cooper fastens up her dress, she evidently does _not_ give great consideration to the state of the mechanical teeth. Why? Because they are commonplace and she can easily purchase another one if they are broken. Now, if these are so commonplace, then _why do we not have knowledge of the invention in England_? And why, if they are indeed being produced in foreign countries, has the knowledge not traveled to Her Majesty's great empire by now? Watson, if you eliminate the impossible, whatever theory is left, however improbable, must be the truth!"  
There is a long pause.  
Then, "Holmes. Holmes, do you honestly believe in your heart that Miss Ada Cooper is from the future? Think with your _heart_, not with your brain."  
Another long pause.  
"Watson, I do think you are trying to put me in the wrong!"  
"I will say this bluntly, my dear Holmes. Time travel is entirely in the realm of fiction, and not particularly inspired fiction, at that. Miss Cooper's claim that she has come from the future is impossible, and no small metallic contraption will convince me otherwise. I may not have as brilliant a mind as you, my friend, but I know where to draw the boundary."  
"But the evidence, Watson!"  
"She is mentally unstable, and she needs a doctor to help her! I personally know a few accomplished surgeons who can easily correct this mental imbalance, and I will send notice to them as soon as you wish."  
A surge of anger has risen in me at Watson's stubbornness, but mostly at the detective Holmes when I realize that he has given up on his argument. They are discussing local surgeons and workhouses when I jump off of the bed, hastily wrap the blanket around me like a bath towel, and fling open the door.  
In the study, a suited, mustached man freezes mid-sentence and stares at me with widening eyes. His face flushes to his hairline as he hastily lifts his head and diverts his attention to an invisible spot on the ceiling. "You, you, you must be..."  
"Miss Ada Cooper," Holmes finishes. He's dressed in a green tweed suit, and his brown hair is considerably more subdued than it was last night. He nods to me, gesturing to his companion. "I trust you haven't met Dr. John Watson, of whom I informed you yesterday. You may speak candidly before him, for he has been my most trusted friend for years."  
"For God's sake, Holmes!"  
"Yes, Watson?"  
"Her peculiar state is hardly appropriate for our meeting, don't you think!"  
Holmes looks confused. "She appears well rested and eager to talk to the both of us."  
"Oh, go to the deuce. Does your logical mind find it slightly strange that as of now her dress is _not_ on her person, but on the back of the wicker armchair, and that she is clad in but a blanket? Holmes, you _must_ wake that dormant region of your mind that is supposed to respond to the weaker sex, before you throw yourself into – "  
I grab the sleeve of Holmes's pea green jacket and stare hard into his gray gaze. "Please, Mr. Holmes," I say. I know I'm begging but now is not the time for pride. "Please believe me. You're the only one who actually does."  
"Miss Cooper, if I can be of any assistance..."  
I furiously shake my head. "I just want your _faith_, Holmes. Your friend Watson doesn't believe me and neither does Lestrade. You think it's easy for me to wake up and find that everything around me just got pushed back a hundred odd years?"  
From the corner of my vision I see Watson rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers.  
"But I'm certain you find our skepticism justifiable, Miss Cooper, in light of your rather fantastic claim. Your case is like nothing we have ever come across before," Holmes says to me.  
"Look, I can prove it to you. I'll give you the proof you want that I'm from the year 2003."  
"Then please, I insist." He lightly takes me by the arm and leads me to the armchairs around the fireplace. We both sit as Watson walks to Holmes's side with his brows still knitted together in an expression of conflicting emotions. "Holmes, perhaps we should – "  
"Let us both strive to seek the truth, shall we, Watson?" the detective demurs, his inquisitive, unassuming gray eyes not leaving me. "Let the lady speak. Miss Cooper, talk about the time that you are from."  
So I inhale deeply and begin. At first I trip and stutter over my words as I try to describe the modern world, but soon the descriptions are pouring from me like a waterfall as I ramble on about the new inventions of the twentieth century. Toasters, colored contact lenses, stereos, nuclear weapons, plastic surgery, computers, television. Holmes soaks in my rushed sentences with nods and small hums of affirmation, and his dilated pupils shine with a hungry light. It's only when the clock on the mantelpiece begins striking ten o'clock that I hurriedly clamp my mouth shut in the middle of my summary on rock music. "Well... I went on and on, didn't I?" I mutter.  
"But this is all so fascinating, Miss Cooper." Holmes sounds as if he's light years away. "Imagine, a machine that may play moving images and sound. So incredible... so incredible..." Abruptly he raises his head to Watson. "These are not the delusions of a madwoman, good doctor," he states.  
Watson releases his breath through thinned lips. "Yes, Holmes, this is all good and well, but how are we to know that the objects she described are indeed real? How will we ever find the truth? We will surely be good and dead by the time the 'computer' is invented." He turns to me with an almost apologetic smile. "Miss Cooper, you must understand that I want real evidence that will prove to me now your claim. I am first and foremost a doctor, unlike my friend who spends his days with theories, conjectures, and shag tobacco."  
Exasperated, I throw my hands up into the air. The blanket around me loosely slips down an inch, and I quickly bring my arms back around me.  
Watson begins examining the ceiling once again, and Holmes is still lost within his thoughts as he stares unfocused into the distance.  
"You want something closer to this era? Well, I know that in thirty years the Titanic will sink," I say in irritation to the both of them. "I know a world war is going to break out around then. I know... listen, I don't know what else to tell you. History class was a long time ago and it was never my strongest point, and I don't think I even learned about nineteenth century England. The only thing I remember from the top of my head is Jack the Ripper and the fact that he killed five prostitutes."  
"Ah." Watson regards me grimly. "Yes, we know about the terrible murders of the unfortunates in Whitechapel as well, my dear girl. This string of events began only recently, the latest murder, the fourth I believe, occurring only several days ago."  
I feel a frown creasing my forehead. "No... I remember there were five, Dr. Watson. No, I'm _certain_ there were five. Five murders. You see, my boyfriend – my former boyfriend – used to read books on Jack the Ripper, and one day I was flipping through one of them, and in there was a photograph of the fifth victim that was so gruesome that it scared me for months." A shiver is starting to course up and down my bare arms as I bring to mind the picture of the bloodied mass that can barely be called human. Holmes has darted forward in his seat and now moves so close to me that I hear his shallow breathing and see the fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead.  
"Yes?" he presses. "What else do you remember about this, Ada? Tell me more!" He takes my hands fiercely and burns into me with those feverish gray eyes.  
"She's lying on a bed," I blurt out. I find that I'm suddenly just as frightened and excited as he is, as though he has transferred his energy to me through his strong, shapely hands. "She's lying on a bed and her face is completely hacked off. And her body is a mess. It's disgusting. It's so disgusting. Blood is everywhere on the walls and pieces of her breasts are lying on the nightstand. Oh, God, it's so horrible!"  
"What else do you remember? Quickly, continue!"  
Watson takes Holmes roughly by the shoulder and shakes him. "You're putting her delicate mind in distress, Holmes! Her feminine composure is not made for such luridness!"  
The detective ignores him. "Ada, tell me more, I beg of you. The bloody bastards of Scotland Yard have forbidden me to take this case for fear I might stir up a sensation in the East End, and assigned that mediocre at best Frederick Abberline instead. But he doesn't know, like you and I know, that there will be five and _only _five. Don't you see the significance, Ada? It is the last foot of the pentagon, and thus, the cycle of the murders are complete! My unerring intuition has told me this, but the Scotland Yarders have chosen to overlook me as is their wont, and now they are poking under stones and searching for dead ends and dispatching scores of men where none is needed. They have practically barred me from Whitechapel, but still from this little room on Baker Street I could use my deduction and see beyond their shortsightedness! And you, Ada, you have confirmed my theory to be truth. Now quickly, my girl, tell me more!"  
"For the love of God, Holmes," Watson interjects, "you swore an oath upon your grave that you would not meddle with the Whitechapel case. I pray you do not drag such a harmless young stranger into your web."  
"It is for our mutual benefit, my dear Watson. This will prove both her and my claims."  
I run my tongue over my chapped lips. "I remember her name," I say. "It's Maddy – no, Mary Jane Kelly. The book said that she was twenty six years old when she died."  
"Do you remember at what date this happened?"  
"I – no. I don't. I'm bad at dates."  
"Think, Ada, think!"  
It still doesn't come to me. "I'm sorry, I really don't remember!"  
"Think harder!"  
"Holmes!" Watson shouts. He strides to me in two steps and brusquely detaches the detective's hands from mine. Blood rushes back into my fingertips and I fall back into the coolness of the armchair, exhausted. Now Watson's concerned face is hovering over me, studying my features with a doctor's precision. "You must excuse my friend. When he is confronted with cases that perk his interest, he can become quite unreasonable in his obsession."  
"It's all right," I whisper. The moment with Holmes was like a vacuum that sucked all the energy out of me, but strangely I feel lighter and less burdened. "Doctor Watson, do you believe me now? Do you still think I'm crazy?"  
"Oh heavens no, you are not crazy, Miss Cooper."  
At this moment there comes a rapid knocking from the door, and a small boy's soprano voice calls, "I've got the morning papers for you, sir!"  
Watson excuses himself with a small "pardon me." As he walks off, I glance at Holmes, and find that he looks as drained as I feel, his tall and lanky body stretched limply out upon the enormous red armchair. "Ada," he sighs. "Ada, I..."  
"Holmes." It is Watson. He is standing a few paces behind us, a fresh newspaper unfolded in front of him. I note with a shock that his pale face is now as white as a newly bleached sheet, as he slowly rotates the paper around so that we can clearly read the bold black headlines spanning across the front of the page:  
  
**"FOUL FIEND  
Resumes His Ghastly Work in London  
Another in the Dread Whitechapel Series  
This Time the Deed Is Done Indoors  
And the Victim is Mutilated Worse  
Than All Her Four Predecessors."  
**  
..........  
  
To be continued...  
  
Note: I twiddled around with the headline a bit. The real one, from the _Boston Daily Globe_ on Friday, November 9, 1888 says, "... Than All Her Seven Predecessors." But that was because the police back then counted in victims that were not the Ripper's. Right now, it's agreed that the Ripper has five "canon" victims. So Sherlock and Ada are right and those Scotland Yarders don't know what they're sending to the newspapers! (Shakes head.) But then I thought it would be too weird to keep in the seven because it would make you confused, and you'd be like, hey didn't they say five? And besides this way it adds more of a punch, blah blah blah blah blah you're probably not reading this anymore anyway so I'll just shut up. Go to www.casebook.org for all your Ripper needs.  
  
Another note: Your geeky fact for the day is that the zipper was invented in 1893! Wow!  
  
Now review. 


	3. Chapter Three

Note: I know I'm updating like a nutcase (seriously, I'm like writing day and night), but I _really_ have to get most of this done by mid July because then I'll be going on a month-long vacation! And then I have to go to college! And then I'll have no time to write sappy fanfics, because alas, I'll be partying. And studying. Anyhoo. People have reviewed! Thank you, reviewers. Kisses go out to you!  
  
**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter Three  
  
"You do realize you will not be able to return to the world of yours for some time, Miss Cooper," Holmes says solemnly to me after a long drag of his cigarette. He exhales, and the smoke wreaths chase each other to the top of the ceiling, where they catch the dimly moody sunlight and softly disperse.  
The three of us are sitting at the dining table over a finished meal of thick beef soup and French bread, and outside the day is wrapping to a close with a red and violet sunset. Watson strikes a matchstick against the paper case and ignites the small lamp on the nearby end table as I give Holmes a slow nod. "I know." I pull the dark purple robe he has lent me closer around my body.  
"This will sound harsh, but we cannot hide from the fact that there is a possibility of your staying here for the rest of your life."  
"My dear Holmes, don't..." Watson admonishes under his breath, but I catch the doctor's eye in a steady, firm stare.  
"There's no use hiding anymore. I have to be honest with myself."  
"But perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Cooper, there will be a way back?" Watson replies with a sympathetic smile. "Perhaps in the same fashion you came?"  
Holmes lets out a small scoff. "No, my dear Watson, the metaphysical possibility of another time jump is wholly infinitesimal."  
"Holmes!"  
"I only speak the truth."  
"He's right," I say.  
A long silence now hangs between us, which is only broken by Holmes coughing lightly into his open fist. "Forgive me if I may seem exceedingly forward," he says, faltering. "I am not accustomed to members of your – your – never mind. Of course, you are welcome to stay at my humble home for the time being, free of any charge, Miss Cooper. In fact, I insist. My dear friend Watson, who used to share these rooms with me in our bachelor days, has since married a Miss Mary Morstan, and now resides in a grand and lovely house where he may conduct his business and family life free from my eccentricities." He coughs again. "But I digress."  
I smile faintly. "Thanks, Mr. Holmes. I don't think I have any other choice but to stay here."  
"But I must add," Watson cuts in tightly, "and excuse me if _I_ seem forward, but this is hardly a situation for polite trivialities – your residing here must not cause a wrong impression." His gaze is filled with meaning, and I quickly understand.  
Holmes doesn't. "Whatever are you getting at, Watson?"  
"The neighbors," the other man draws out with a roll of his eyes. "The neighbors will see that London's only consulting detective has suddenly taken an innocent, impressionable young woman into his lodgings, and there will be gossip if you are not careful. The rest of the world is made of emotion, Holmes, and few is as coldly calculating as you."  
"What the deuce do I care about what the neighbors say?"  
A thought pops into my mind and I interrupt the both of them. "Watson has a point. I'll pretend to be a maid. This way no one will suspect me or gossip about us."  
"By Jove, Miss Cooper, you have echoed my idea exactly!" Holmes says to me with a laugh. He looks at Watson and continues, "It will be the perfect solution to this dilemma, even though Mrs. Hudson will be none too happy when she finds out another caretaker has replaced her dear spot in my heart. But Miss Cooper cannot cook in the least, so – "  
"How did you know?" I narrow my eyes at the detective suspiciously, and for a wild, fleeting moment think that maybe the joke is finally over, and that my mother, father, and small circle of friends will jump out from behind the door with a huge bouquet of flowers and an apology for playing such a cruel prank.  
"Your hands, Miss Cooper," Holmes is explaining. "Your hands are smooth and soft, and show no signs of having ever worked in the kitchen."  
Oh. I sink back into my seat.  
"This is quite a marvelous idea," Watson remarks to me. "As Holmes mentioned, I have a wife, who still possesses quite a number of plain dresses from her youth. I am certain to be able to 'borrow' several from her closets without her noticing their absence – after all, you certainly cannot wear your own black lace outfit in civilized London without arousing suspicion. In fact, I may endeavor to retrieve my wife's dresses right now and bring them to you tomorrow morning."  
"But must you go at this very moment, Watson?" Holmes says, plucking the cigarette end from his mouth and extinguishing it on the edge of his plate. "It is true that we have talked the whole day with Miss Cooper, but my intuition tells me our discussions of the marvelous twenty first century are far from over."  
Watson shifts in his chair and a blush creeps to his cheeks. "Well... I suppose I can stand to hear an hour or two more of your tales, Miss Cooper. Tell me once more about this particular 'cardio pulmonary resuscitation' technique. It is a shame and a disgrace that it has not yet been invented in the medical field, indeed."  
His blush deepens as he shakes his head, and I have to smile.  
  
..........  
  
The woman in my dream is standing in the middle of a smoke filled dance floor, strobe lights jarring her features with vivid color flashes. Her lips are red, wetly shining, beckoning. "Sign this," she says without making a sound. She holds the paper out to me between her curving black nails. "Sign your soul away, Ada."  
"Yes, of course." And I take it and smooth it and sign it with my blood.  
And then she is gone, and the glaring white headlights of the car flood my vision until I am in a blank world without shadows. Pain fills me. Pure pain. I try to scream but I can't.  
A man in white, somehow visible in my sightless vision. "Careful, give me three more milligrams," he orders, and suddenly the slaughtered body of Mary Jane Kelly is staggering towards me on dismembered legs hanging loosely from a disemboweled torso. She has no face, and I can see the white, blood streaked bones of her skull.  
I squint at her, fighting my repulsion. No, she has_ my_ face.  
And now she breaks into a loping run on those terrible, shredded legs, her skin sloughing off with every step, and she's yelling with a lipless mouth, "No, leave her here, Jack. Leave her here. She'll be good for business."  
The scream that has been forcing its way to the surface breaks free.  
And I wake up in a cold sweat, bolting from the bed. The wool blanket is entangled around my body like a suffocating serpent, and I kick and tug at it, gasping. The London night is as inky black as the darkest color of a painter's palette.  
I feel myself almost falling to the floor when the bedroom door flies open, and the shadow of a man rushes in. Behind him, the study is dimly lit by a single kerosene lamp, and I thank God or whoever's out there for that tiny blessing of light.  
"Tony?" I manage, still in a daze. "Holmes? Watson?"  
"Watson left after supper, Miss Cooper. Are you all right?" It's Holmes. He gathers up the length of blanket that has fallen to the floor and piles it on the bed, at the same time easing me with his wiry arms away from the edge.  
Before I have gathered enough composure to reply, he says, quietly, "Never mind. I can see that you are suffering from a nightmare. Take deep breaths, Miss Cooper. It will ease the hyperventilation."  
I clutch at a corner of the damp covers. The image of my rotting face in place of Mary Kelly's on that rotting corpse replays over and over in my mind, and I feel the clammy wetness of newly shed tears on my cheek. I swipe at my face with the trembling palms of my hands. "I saw her. I saw..."  
"Mary Kelly. Yes, I know."  
I dimly wonder how he knew, but don't bother to ask. He has been startling me with little surprises ever since our first meeting. "She was coming to get me. Oh God. And she was saying, 'Leave her here, Jack. She'll be good for business,' like she wanted to sacrifice me to the Ripper."  
"Ada, rest assured that the pentagon is complete, and that the Whitechapel murders are over."  
"I saw a man I've never seen before. He was wearing all white," I hurry on, not caring if the detective can make any sense of my words as the nightmare comes spilling out of me. "And there was also this woman. I saw her first. She wore black and she asked me to sign my soul away on a piece of paper filled with scribbles I couldn't read. I signed it with my blood. There was so much blood everywhere. I'm sorry, Holmes. I'm sorry."  
Holmes gropes about in the dim light, pulls up a chair, and lowers himself into it. "No, you must cleanse the nightmare from your mind by telling me. I pray you continue, Miss Cooper."  
"And the headlights came, and it hurt so much, like every inch of me was on fire, and I couldn't move and I couldn't scream, and I was just paralyzed there as the man says something weird, like 'three milligrams,' I think it was. I must sound like a raving lunatic, but I'm so freaked out right now."  
"Nightmares, while frightening, are but random conjectures of a pressured mind," Holmes murmurs softly. "The arrival of the _Daily Globe_ newspaper in close succession to our conversation must have impacted you as greatly as it did me. You may note that I have not yet gone to retire, opting instead to read a coldly scientific book on the properties of chemicals." I think he is smiling.  
I inhale the musky, tobacco tinted air with a shudder. "I don't think I can fall asleep again, ever. Death always gets to me, no matter how those Goths like Tony try to glorify it. I guess it's always fun and games until it hits you."  
"Unreal city," Holmes says after a short pause. His voice sounds far away, like he's echoing thoughts from a deep recess in his memory. "Under a brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many."  
I slowly run my gaze over him as something familiar in his recital tugs at me. It is almost as if I had heard those words before. "Is that a poem, Holmes?" I ask.  
He lifts his thin shoulders in a shrug, then seems to shake himself from his trance. "You must excuse me, Miss Cooper. When I am deep in contemplation I may break out into incomprehensible soliloquies that puzzle even myself. Perhaps what I have said is a portion of an obscure poem I heard in passing many years ago."  
Unreal city, I muse disjointedly. Vienna London, unreal. "It's so... dark and beautiful."  
"Miss Cooper?"  
"Do you know any more of that poem? The way you said it was so beautiful."  
"I beg pardon!" He sounded confused, but now he sounds almost offended. "It was but a rant in a moment of weakness! And now you must sleep, for it is late. Does the nightmare still haunt you?"  
"I – no," I say, and realize that I have calmed down considerably from just a few moments ago. "I'm sorry for disturbing you. You must have been busy with your work."  
"It is all right, Miss Cooper, it is all right. Do try to sleep."  
As I close my eyes and let my fatigue overtake me, I am dimly aware that Holmes is still sitting in the chair by my bed, his elbows propped upon the armrests and his long fingers curled beneath his chin.  
This time I dream of a single foreign word being whispered over and over in the silence._ Shantih shantih shantih._  
  
..........  
  
Holmes is still sleeping when the knock comes at the door. He is leaning over the small desk beside the bed, his head resting on top of his circled arms. A lock of dark brown hair that has fallen across his closed eyes slightly wavers as the icy morning wind swirls through a crack in the window.  
Pushing the covers off of me, I tiptoe from my bed to the window and pull it closed. The chill of winter has settled in, and I shrink my hands beneath the long sleeves of the purple robe as I begin to walk out of the bedroom and to the front door.  
When I pass the sleeping Holmes I steal a glance at him, and pause in my steps as I find myself ruminating over his features, his intelligent forehead etched with a hint of a frown, his aquiline nose and strong chin. I notice with a small dash of amusement that even in sleep, the slight curve of petulance and arrogance hasn't left his mouth.  
The knock comes again, louder, and Holmes stirs. Quickly I jog to the front door.  
"Watson here," a familiar voice calls. "I have the needed items for Miss Cooper – "  
I swing the door open. "Hush."  
The doctor is standing in the short hallway with a top hat on his head and large white cloth bundle tucked under an arm. When he sees me his eyebrows dart upwards in surprise. "Why, Miss Cooper. I did not think that _you_ would – where in God's name is Holmes?"  
"He's sleeping," I answer quietly, holding an index finger to my lips as I step aside for Watson to pass.  
He shuffles in carefully with the bundle. "Sleeping at this o'clock? When I left my house it was a quarter past nine."  
"Last night he was working late," I reply, and wonder in curiosity just how long he kept vigil over me as he fended off my nightmares. I bite the inside of my cheek. "Here, I'll take the bag from you, Watson. Thank you and your wife so much for doing this for me."  
"No, no, Miss Cooper, your gratitude is too generous, for this is the least I can do, I'm sure," he politely protests as he heaves the dresses into my arms. "I have managed to secure three, and I would have packed more, if it were not for the fact that you are to be under the guise of a maid, and in which case you will have no need for the more luxurious gowns that my wife loves so well."  
"Watson, this is more than I can ever ask for." I walk to the bedroom and place the bundle of dresses on the bed. Holmes mutters in his sleep and a corner of his eye twitches, but he does not awaken.  
The London winter is so cold, I think. I take the wool blanket from the bed and drape it over the detective's shoulders.  
"It is quite odd that Holmes is neither in his domicile nor that old threadbare armchair," Watson is saying from the study. A moment later, I hear his voice closer behind me, "Why..."  
I turn around to see that the perplexed doctor has stopped short in the doorway of his former room. "Keep your voice down. He's still asleep," I whisper.  
"Yes, Miss Cooper, but in _here_?"  
"Last night I had some nightmares. He came in and talked to me a bit, and I guess he was too tired to leave afterwards."  
"Apparently so. Though I must say it is out of the ordinary for him, Miss Cooper. While he claims he is an insufferably lazy man, in reality he is able to be in high spirits after two full nights without sleep. That is, when he is on the scent of a particularly fascinating case. But perhaps... perhaps business is slow this time of year."  
I can't think of what to say to that so I only smile. "Will you be eating breakfast with us, Dr. Watson?"  
"Unfortunately I must decline. I have an appointment in two hours with a patient, and so I will need to be off. Good morning, Miss Cooper. You can be sure I shall drop by as often as business permits so that I may be enlightened by your unique knowledge of your times." Tapping the brim of his hat, he rises briefly off his heels and strides to the front door. "Oh, and Miss Cooper?" he says, his hand on the handle. He looks at me, and for a split second I see an unreadable expression flutter across the doctor's face, an expression that strangely reminds me of the sympathetic, almost pitying smile he gave me last night at the after dinner conversation.  
"Yes, Watson?"  
"Take good care of yourself, Miss Cooper, and be careful in this new world," he finishes swiftly, and is gone.  
I am left standing in the study, shifting my weight from foot to foot and listening to the steady clicks of the clock on the mantelpiece. I don't know what to think about Watson's last statement, and I wonder if he feels sorry for me as he sees me settle into motions of this new life with a calm that surprises even myself. Or maybe he's seen the scars on the pale skin of my inner arms and is too hesitant to ask of the ways I've been trashing my body in what he calls the brilliant world of the twenty first century.  
Shivering inwardly, I stare unfocused into the empty, blackened fireplace.  
"Good morning, Miss Cooper."  
I spin around, my heart jumping to my throat. "Jesus Christ!"  
It's Sherlock Holmes, leaning on an elbow against the crimson patterned wall of the study and the wool blanket folded neatly over his forearm. He greets me with a small smile. "Your actions were brilliant, if I do say so myself."  
I give him a sidelong glance. "What are you talking about?"  
"Miss Cooper, I had deduced upon our first meeting that your peculiar accent of speech, your manner of dress, and your heightened emotional outbursts that is so common among the fairer sex would render you greatly apart from the majority of London. But upon my observing, or rather, my listening, to your courteous exchange with Watson a minute earlier, I must admit that you have succeeded in proving me wrong. With practice, you, a woman from the distant future, may soon improve to blend into this world with the utmost ease."  
I stare at him blankly. "When did you wake up, Holmes?"  
"Evidently when Watson first knocked. My sense of hearing is extraordinarily acute."  
"And you stayed there, pretending you were asleep?"  
"Ah, for that you must forgive me, Miss Cooper," he replies, looking very pleased with himself. "I decided to conduct what one might call a small, impromptu study of your behavior, and now I can safely inform you that you have passed with flying colors."  
For some reason a twinge of irritation pulls at me, and I brush past him as I walk into the bedroom where the bundle of dresses lie on the bed. "Whatever, Holmes."  
"Pardon, Miss Cooper?" he says after me. "I did not catch that."  
I wheel around and tilt my head so I can stare into his gray eyes. "Watson just gave me some of his wife's dresses and I'm going to try them on. So now..." I quickly think up the appropriate Victorian vocabulary. "So now, _if_ you please, Mr. Holmes, I _pray_ you forgive me, but I _must_ be alone, unless you would rather be sued and jailed."  
"It is evident I am not the only one who has been pressing an ear to others' conversations, Miss Cooper," he replies softly as he turns his back to me and strolls out of the room.  
"Well, thanks for your robe, but I'm going to have to return it to you, Mr. Holmes," I retort, untying the bundle of dresses.  
"You are _most_ welcome, Miss Cooper," he snaps back.  
  
..........  
  
To be continued...  
  
The good news for some people and the bad news for other people is that this is about as much fluff as you're gonna get.  
  
Do you know where the "unreal city" line comes from? If you do, good for you! Now keep it to yourself. You're already a step ahead from the rest of us.  
  
Review, good people. 


	4. Chapter Four

**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter Four  
  
The time spent with Sherlock Holmes in nineteenth century London begin to roll like a snowball that first tumbles ungracefully down the hill but gradually grows and gathers speed. Days melt into a week, then two, and one night as I sit curled up by the fireplace I realize that fifteen whole days have passed.  
Life is not as difficult as I expected, mostly because Holmes insists on keeping the same schedule as before. His landlady, an older woman named Mrs. Hudson, cooks our meals and takes our clothes to the corner laundry, and at the end of the day the only chores I am left with is clearing the dishes and sweeping stray tobacco dust from the carpet.  
When I try to organize the papers and books in the study, Holmes appears annoyed and tells me he has his own unique method of organizing things. I scan over the mountains of old clippings, half opened books, and photographs stabbed to the mantel with a jackknife, and I'm not sure I believe him.  
It seems to me that Holmes is content simply to listen to me talk. Every evening after dinner we sit by the warmth of the fireplace, and he urges me to tell him about my world. And then his distant eyes are on me as he smokes a pipe and I describe everything I can think of, from television shows to the streets of San Francisco. By the time we go to bed at the stroke of midnight, the intoxicating smoke from his pipe have gathered in misty tendrils on the ceiling, but not once before then does he interrupt me, not even when I know I'm not making sense to him with my babblings. He only listens.  
At night I dream that caught in the blinding headlights are the woman with red lips and the man in white and the body of Mary Jane Kelly – and sometimes even Tony – but I no longer feel pain or hear their screams, as soft cool rain splashes lightly into my dreamscape and a voice whispers, "_Shantih_."  
Come morning, life moves at a different pace. Holmes is often in the study with Dr. Watson, both of them conferencing with a business client, and their expressions are enough to tell me that I'm not welcome there. Sometimes they leave for hours and return with haggard faces and dusty clothes. When I ask them what has happened, Holmes always cuts Watson's sentences off with a curt, "Business, Miss Cooper."  
One day Watson draws me aside into my room. He asks me under his breath, "Are you all right?" and I note the worry in his tense features.  
"Why shouldn't I be?"  
He seems as if he's struggling to make his words come out in the correct manner of a Victorian gentleman. "You are, after all, from a very distant place and time, Miss Cooper, and I wonder if you have... adjusted... to your stay here. Holmes can be, shall I say, difficult. He is quite a singular man, and when he is on the scent of a case he can forget that anything else, or indeed, any_one_ else, exists. Perhaps... at times, he has neglected to give you adequate..."  
He trails off, but I understand what he is saying. "It's okay, Watson. We get along. We talk."  
"Indeed?"  
"Yeah. Well, actually I talk the most and he likes to listen. He wants to know all about the twenty first century. Other than that, I stay out of his business, and we're both okay."  
Relief makes the doctor's rigid shoulders relax a little, and he smiles. "You know, there is always the company of Mrs. Hudson. And I believe there is a young woman across the street only a handful of years younger than yourself."  
"I'll keep that in mind, Dr. Watson. Thank you."  
It is then that Holmes rushes in, dressed in his tweed suit and floppy brimmed hat. "Whatever is keeping you, my dear Watson? The game is afoot and you waste precious time."  
As Watson departs he gives me a small, vaguely sad nod. "Good morning, Miss Cooper," he says, and we never speak of the subject again.  
But over the next few days the thought dances in and out of my mind, and I find myself musing about Holmes's private life whenever I notice him in the corner of my vision, scribbling in a notebook or hunched over a bubbling chemistry experiment.  
Has he been married? Who is she? What did she look like? Did she leave him and is that the reason why he treats women as if they're no different from men? Is he gay?  
The thoughts become a lighthearted distraction during the moments when I gaze from my window into the fog stained London street and feel the darkest shadows of my memories come seeping into consciousness.  
By the end of the second week, when I have almost convinced myself with my little mind games of Holmes's homosexuality, I find something that surprises me. It is twenty minutes past midnight and I'm shuffling drowsily to my room when the corner of a large sepia photograph on Holmes's desk catches my attention.  
Holmes, still sitting in his armchair, is immersed in a scientific book, and doesn't notice when I gently free the photograph from the surrounding papers and pull it towards me. The photograph is of a woman. A heartbreakingly beautiful woman with full dark lips and smooth skin and thick wavy hair that is coiled loosely into a cascading crown. Her pale eyes are startling, shining with an intensely intelligent and distantly unhappy light.  
I lose track of how long I stand there staring into those luminously tragic eyes, but I eventually find my voice. "Holmes?" I say in a daze.  
"Yes, Miss Cooper?" he responds, looking up from his book. "May I be of any assis..." He sees the item in my hand and the faint smile drops from his face. Slowly, he closes the book between his palms and after a long silence, says almost inaudibly, "Did you find that on my desk?"  
"Yeah. Who is this?"  
In the wavering glow of the dying fire Holmes's eyes are almost black. "She is... she is but a suspect in a case, Miss Cooper. May I kindly ask you _not_ to – "  
"Does she have a name?"  
Another drawn out silence. "It escapes me."  
"Or did _she_ escape you?" I whisper, half to myself, as I flip to the back of the picture. On the bottom left corner in Holmes's distinct hurried handwriting is the note:

**Mar., 1888. Irene Adler. The woman.**

"Her name is Irene Adler, just in case you forgot," I announce, turning over the photograph so I can see the woman's face again. It's the face of someone he loves, I think, and somehow I know it to be true.  
Holmes lets out a short sigh. "You say it is Irene Adler? I will certainly remember that, Miss Cooper," he says levelly but sarcastically, passing a hand through his uncombed brown hair.  
I shake my head. "But her name's not very important, is it, when she's the woman to you?"  
In a single fluid motion Holmes has risen to his feet. He walks toward me and reaches me in four strides, and for the first time in more than half a month I realize how tall he is.  
I swallow uncomfortably. "Was she your lover?"  
He is staring down at me and his eyes are dark and otherwise unreadable as he wordlessly slides the picture from my fingers. He does not even glance at it as he opens the nearest leather folder on the desk and places the photograph face first among the assortment of other crumbling snapshots. And then he slaps the folder closed, ties the strings of the covers together, and inserts the folder into the middle of a stack of identical ones in the far shelf of his desk.  
Then he walks away from me until he pauses the doorway of his darkened bedroom. He places a hand upon the rich mahogany frame and turns to look at me. "She was not my lover," he says softly, regards me for a second more, and disappears from view.  
The nightmares that plague me that night are once more blasted with sound and agony, but this time the cool rain doesn't sprinkle its soothing caresses upon my burning body, and I wake at sunrise with Irene Adler's cruel and haughty laughter still ringing in my ears.  
  
..........  
  
To be continued...

Thanks for reading and reviewing, everyone! I give you more kisses and happy karma. Now, review more for even more karma.


	5. Chapter Five

**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter Five  
  
The small glass bottle rests upon the bookshelf, catching the cold orange afternoon sun from the window and dispersing it gently along the worn leather spines of the antique books. I put down the brush and ashtray I have been using to dust the furniture, but stop myself from picking up the bottle to examine it as I remember the Irene Adler fiasco of last night.  
It was my mistake. I'm still wondering why I deliberately pressed Holmes about the photograph when I knew that he was not a man who could easily toss aside his old heartaches with a laugh and a snide joke. But whatever the reason, the outcome of my actions is undeniable.  
He's human, I think to myself. The detective that Watson calls a logical machine is in fact human.  
My focus drifts back to the bottle sitting on the shelf, and I notice that is halfway filled with a clear fluid. A tiny reflection of me, distorted by the glass and water like an image from a funhouse mirror, stares back with misshapen, ghostly blue eyes, and my long wavy hair limply frames my face like shredded black curtains. The image in the bottle is almost smirking as a corner of my lips is turned upward by an uneven ridge on the glass surface.  
Ironic to think of it now, but when Tony first met me at Joe's Club so many years ago he called me beautiful. He slid into the chair beside me at the bar and said that I was angelic and pure and beautiful, like an angel. Then, when I didn't speak, he added that there seemed to be mask over my features as if I was hiding something from the world. After all, why would an innocent girl like me be doing at the club? What was wrong? Did I want to talk about it?  
I brushed him off with a few choice words because then I was brave.  
"Damn, I'm sorry, lady. Me and my big mouth. Let's start this over, okay? My name's Tony. What's yours?"  
"Look, just leave me alone. I'm serious."  
"I can help you stop the pain," he said.  
And it began from there. Three years later he no longer called me beautiful as I lay stretched out on the floor of his apartment, disinterestedly watching my own blood trickle from a newly slit wrist and down my arms.  
Sometimes he would drunkenly lie next to me and lick up the crimson trail with a rough, clammy tongue. "I'm your vampire, my poet. Together we'll live in the darkness while everyone else dies. Forget about fucking college, your fucking parents who disowned you, your fucking friends who can't understand you. Screw them. Hell, kill them. None of that matters anymore because while we're together for all eternity, sooner or later they're going to die and rot in the ground. You're going to sing forever, Ada. You'll sing without pain because I'm going to take away your pain."  
And he would fall into a mumbling sleep, or climb on top of me and make his use of my alcohol numbed body. And when it is all over, for a moment I would actually believe him.  
  
..........  
  
Teardrops are tumbling down my cheeks like pearls when the front door swings open and jolts me out of my memory. Holmes has returned from another one of his missions, but I imagine wildly that it's Tony anyway, and huddle against the bookcase with a sob.  
"Miss Cooper, you are distressed!" the detective exclaims when he notices me, quickly closing the door and rushing to me. Through my tears I can see the shock in his clear gray eyes, but it's buried as his practical businesslike facade falls instinctively into place.  
"Come, you must sit and relieve yourself of the dilemma that is troubling you," he says, taking my arm to lead me to the armchairs.  
I shrink back brusquely. I have rolled up both of my sleeves to avoid dirtying them while dusting, and the crisscrossing map of scars on my forearm are blatantly visible in the vivid afternoon light. "Holmes, I'm okay. I'm fine," I choke out. "Just leave me alone for a minute."  
"I dare not abandon you while you are faced with such an ordeal, Miss Cooper," he says.  
"My weak, feminine, inferior body is not going to break down, Holmes, so you can just leave me alone," I snap through my crying, surprised by my own sudden vehemence. "I don't need your help. I've gotten enough help from guys in the past."  
I barrel past him, pushing his unsuspecting frame against the bookshelf with a muffled thud as I run to the bedroom on shaky legs and dive into the neatly smoothed blankets of the bed. I find the feather pillow with my hands and burrow my head under it so that all I can hear is my strangled breaths mixed with the rhythmic pulse of blood pounding into my ears.  
My mind is reeling in turmoil when I feel the gentle tap on my shoulder blade.  
"Miss Cooper?"  
"Leave me alone, Holmes."  
"My intuition tells me that you would rather prefer company."  
"Your 'intuition'?" Struggling with the blankets and the overwhelming skirt of my dress, I roll over to stare at him incredulously. He is standing by the bed, dressed in a brown suit and long black overcoat. His forehead is marred with a puzzled frown. "Have you ever thought that your intuition could be _wrong_?" I demand.  
"It is plausible at times, Miss Cooper, though it has rarely failed me in my cases," he replies.  
"So you think of me as simply another case? Am I just a textbook of the twenty first century for you?"  
"I beg pardon?"  
"Oh, forget it." I turn my back to him and bury my wet face in the pillow. "Please, go away. I don't want to talk."  
After a short silence he murmurs, "Very well," and I hear his footsteps growing fainter as he leaves the room.  
"Holmes?" I whisper to no answer. He's gone.  
The pillow beneath my face grows hot as fresh tears soak into the cloth. Sighing raggedly, I furiously lace my fingers into my mess of tangled hair.  
And it's then that I hear the thin, vibrating note sifting into the air. It seems to echo forever, swelling from a soft trembling breath into a desperate cry, and then suddenly changes, dips, and soars. It is violin music, I realize.  
I clamber to a sitting position. The music is slow and sweeping and seeped in sadness as it hangs plaintively onto the high notes and tumbles into turbulent, jumbled rolls and rumbles. Then a violent chord ascends into a vicious octave scale, and just as I can no longer stand the earsplitting wail, the initial soft melody takes over once more.  
I ease myself to my feet and tiptoe to the slightly ajar bedroom door. Sherlock Holmes is standing in the study, drawing a bow across a violin that is tucked under his chin. His eyes are tightly closed and his fingers are almost a blur as he plunges into a succession of rapid notes.  
Gently, I pull the door open wider, but the rusty, unoiled hinges give a loud dissonant squeal, and Holmes's melody tapers off as he stops playing. He blinks two or three times and stares at me as though he has just woken up from a dream.  
"That was... incredible," I say when I find my voice. "I didn't know you could play violin."  
"Ada... Miss Cooper, surely you exaggerate." He hastily removes the violin from his neck and rests it under an arm. There is a flush of redness on his usually colorless, pale cheeks. "You must know that the violin is but a small hobby of mine," he explains as if it's an excuse. "Since you said earlier that you would rather not talk, I supposed that music would perhaps... never mind. My apologies, Miss Cooper."  
"Why? I liked it. What's the name of the song you were playing?"  
"It is the second violin concerto by the Polish composer Henryk Wieniawski. It is a relatively recent piece and technically quite difficult, but I prefer much lighter fare, such as Mozart's concertinas or Bach's violin solos, over this type of melodramatic drivel."  
"Holmes, it's not drivel. Drivel's what you call the songs I had to sing for my band. Pain is pleasure, death is life, all that kind of stuff," I say with a shaky smile, wiping the residue of tears from my face. "This isn't drivel. It's romantic music."  
Holmes looks taken aback. "I see, Miss Cooper." He gazes into my eyes with an unreadable, solemn expression that seems to deepen and expand, and I'm aware of my heartbeat drumming in double time against my ribcage.  
Then abruptly, he shakes his head. "You must excuse me," he says quietly, placing the violin and bow upon the coffee table. He strides to his room and silently closes the door behind him.  
I follow him with my eyes, and as I pass over the dusty collection of books on the bookshelf, I realize that the tiny glass bottle in the corner is gone.  
  
..........  
  
The suffocating tobacco smoke swirls inside the endless pulsating black dance floor like living fog. I'm dreaming again, of the woman with the red lips and of the man in spotless white and of the decaying body of Mary Kelly.  
But this time it is different, because out of the misty darkness steps Sherlock Holmes. He's dressed in a shining black evening suit, and his dark hair is immaculately slicked and parted. He is handsome in a way I never could have imagined. "Let us dance, my dear," he says when he reaches me, holding out a beautifully shaped hand.  
I place my hand in his, and he sweeps me into a slow waltz. I don't know the steps but somehow we're dancing as a familiar haunting violin melody floats in from the distance.  
"Why are we doing this?" I ask him.  
"We have signed our souls away," he whispers against my ear, his breath warm. "It is only a matter of time."  
"For what?"  
"Madame Sosostris tells me to fear death by water."  
The violin music increases tempo and I think I am flying with him in the black expanse of thick smoke and colored lights.  
"Madame Sosostris?"  
"The famous clairvoyante, my dear. She is the wisest woman in Europe, with a wicked pack of cards."  
"Will you die by water?"  
"Yes. The water is poisoned and it flows within me like a waterfall."  
"And will I die?"  
"Only Madame Sosostris can tell."  
We have stopped in silence and we are holding hands before the blinding white headlights, as the woman with the red lips condenses into view amidst a golden glow. She walks towards us, her black high heels hollowly clicking against the invisible ground.  
"Hello Ada. Hello Sherlock." Her smile is that of a hungry wolf.  
"Are you Madame Sosostris?" I ask.  
She haughtily tilts her beautiful, daintily pointed chin at my companion. "What does Sherlock say?"  
"I do not remember you," Holmes replies raspily. "I do not want to remember you."  
And suddenly, I recognize her.  
"You're Irene Adler."  
She responds by laughing cruelly with those red lips. "I told you, Jack, that three milligrams were not enough. Jack is such a saucy boy. Look what he did to poor Mary Kelly."  
The naked bloody corpse with the hacked off face materializes before me, holding her hands to her open torso. "Do you want to be like me, Adeleine Cooper?"  
I don't know how she can speak with no mouth, but her voice is loud and clear in my ears. "No, Mary Kelly, please."  
"Tony sold you to the devil, but then again, all men have a tendency to do that."  
"Not Sherlock Holmes."  
"Falling in love with him won't lead you out of hell. It will only lead you to Saucy Jack. Jack is watching, so be careful, Ada. You're only safe when you have no eyes."  
I see the man in the white doctor's robe, and then there is a glint of metal, and finally, darkness.  
  
..........  
  
To be continued...  
  
Ooh, the oddity and the mystery.  
  
Anyway, the violin concerto that I had Holmes play is Concerto Number 2 in D (Opus 22) by Wieniawski. It's very good! Give it a listen! 


	6. Chapter Six

**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter Six  
  
"I'm going out now."  
Holmes, sitting in his armchair with a morning cigarette in the corner of his mouth, peers up at me from his newspaper. "I beg your pardon, Miss Cooper?" he says with a smoky exhale. "May you repeat your sentence? I must have heard incorrectly when I heard you say that you wanted to go out."  
"You heard correctly. I'm going out now, and I want to be alone."  
"But why? You have not yet breakfasted. Mrs. Hudson will be bringing up her signature scrambled eggs shortly. You seem to savor those more than anything else she concocts, save for the apple pie."  
"I'm sorry, but I'm not hungry today."  
"Then I welcome you to join me in a chat beside the fireplace, Miss Cooper. Unfortunately, last night we were not able do so, due to our... minor disagreement. But I sincerely hope that after a good night's sleep you are feeling well. Here, come and sit with me. You must tell me more of that invention called the 'laptop computer.'"  
The windows and curtains that are barring out the chilly autumn air keep the pungent tobacco smoke hovering inside the small, confined study like an oppressive drug. Unwillingly I think back to the 'good night' of sleep that Holmes mentioned, and shudder inwardly. The strange faces and conversations are still replaying vividly in my mind, but mostly I remember the waltz and the hypnotizing music and the way he swept me so breathlessly against him...  
I make a move for the door. "Maybe at a later time. I'm going out."  
Holmes holds up a thin hand and I freeze in my tracks as if a string has pulled me back. His voice is serious now, having lost its previous cheerful undertone. "Miss Cooper, for your safety, I do not advise you to leave this building. You are from another time and place, and you are wholly unfamiliar with these often dangerous streets of London. You will not be able to deal with situations should they arise, and you will cause undue harm to yourself."  
I want to tell him the truth that I'm simply hoping for some fresh air and that I won't stray far, but what comes out is: "Look, Holmes. I've already accepted the fact that I'm going to live in this world for the rest of my life, and I want to live a normal life, or as normal as a life can be, given my history. I need to step outside and face the real world. You can't keep me in here like I'm your personal private oracle of the future, Holmes." My eyes are stinging from the cigarette smoke. "Look, can you put that out, please?"  
"The cigarette?"  
"Holmes, you want to know what we discovered in the twenty first century? We discovered that everything you smoke now – the ten different pipes and cigars and cigarettes – is going to give you lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure, not to mention an early, sudden death. _That's_ what we discovered."  
Holmes looks distinctly confused. Hesitantly he takes the cigarette from his mouth and crushes it in the ashtray on the coffee table. "Perhaps you should tell our good doctor friend about this, Miss Cooper."  
"I will, after I come back from my walk. See you in an hour – "  
"No, Miss Cooper, I forbid you," Holmes interrupts tightly, hopping to his feet and cutting in front of me. "I have told you the logical reasons."  
"Yes, I know. But I still choose to go outside now."  
"Miss Cooper, you are obligated to listen to me."  
I raise my eyebrows. "Excuse me? Why am I 'obligated' to listen to you?"  
"I have lived in London most of my life, and therefore I know more about the city than you. In addition, I am older than you, and coincidentally the wiser. Also – "  
"Also, I bet you are going to add that you're a big, strong man, and I'm only a weak, fragile lost woman." I blurt out before I can check myself. I take a step closer to him and glare up into his face. "I don't believe that. I'm not your docile little wife, and I don't ever want to be. You know, what Watson said to me earlier had a point."  
Holmes narrows his gray eyes. "I gather that over the weeks you and Dr. Watson have been sharing countless discussions on the topic of my person, Miss Cooper. Judging from your previous reticence of the subject, I also deduce that few of these discussions have been particularly flattering to me."  
"We only shared _one_ – "  
"Ah, so the truth reveals itself," he says, an unmistakable wounded bitterness tinging his words. "My exaggerated conjecture has suceeded in drawing it out of you."  
"Well, if you wanted to know what we were talking about, why didn't you ask me directly?" I retort, crossing my arms. "It wasn't as if we were spreading rumors behind your back. I was actually defending you. Ridiculous to even think of doing that now."  
"And is this the reason why you are blushing so forcefully at this moment, Miss Cooper?"  
It takes me several tries to find my voice. "I'm blushing because I would rather live in an insane asylum than to be your human fact book. Now let me go." I sidestep him, but he swiftly mirrors my movement and I end up walking into his chest. His purple robe smells faintly of soap, sandalwood, and tobacco, and I'm once again reminded of my dream.  
"Tell me where you will go," Holmes is demanding as I backpedal away.  
"None of your business," I snap. "Maybe I'll go to Watson's and never return here again."  
"Surely he and his wife will enjoy the manner in which you pry into other people's possessions and ask deeply personal questions, Miss Cooper."  
I smile, a little harshly. "You wanted Irene Adler to be your lover, didn't you? But she slipped right through your fingers. Actually, if you had only tightened them a little bit, she would have come to you, Holmes. But she left right under your nose and you didn't do anything about it. Even after she gave you her picture – and do you realize how beautiful she is? – you didn't do anything about it."  
Holmes is deathly silent.  
"From _your _expression, _I_ deduce that_ I'm_ right," I declare. "Some of your analytical skills must have rubbed off on me."  
"You may believe your fanciful delusions if that is your wish," Holmes replies, stepping aside to open the front door. "I welcome you to leave for as long as you prefer."  
"Thank you, Mr. Holmes." I stalk past him and out into the short, dark hallway. "And you don't need to save breakfast for me."  
"Rest assured, Miss Cooper, that I hold no intention of doing so. Good day." With a stiff bow he shuts the door in my face. I stand there for a moment, my heaving breath echoing loudly in the hallway, and with one last glare at the door panel I gather my skirt above my ankles and descend the steps that lead to Baker Street.  
Outside, the slate gray fog-infused sky presses dully overhead. The brick buildings that line the road seem like a continuous, mud colored wall pockmarked with curtained windows, and the cobblestones of the street glisten with watery condensation.  
An elderly couple in black passes me in the sidewalk, the pinched, wrinkled woman looking as if she was refraining from staring at me cautiously, and the man tilting his top hat and muttering a perfunctual, "Good morning, miss."  
Suddenly I hear the shouts of children as up ahead, three boys with brown faces and tattered clothing spill out of a narrow doorway, kicking a black rubber ball in front of them. The ball shoots off of the sidewalk, bounces into the road, and rolls into the path of a horse and carriage that has just rattled in from around the corner.  
The portly, mustached driver yanks the reins just as the boys come dashing after the ball in a flurry of skinny arms and legs. "Aye, watch where yer goin', ya heathen nincompoops!" he shouts.  
"Go buy yerself some pastries, fatty!" one of the boys return as the carriage clatters past. The children share a laugh, and a second later, the incident is forgotten as they resume their heated ball game.  
I have to smile. I watch them for a little while longer, and when I feel the chilly air seep through the fabric of my dress, I start a brisk walk down the street in the first direction my feet takes me.  
It's when I pass an intersecting alley that I feel the odd prickling sensation in the nape of my neck that someone is watching me. A black shadow flutters into my peripheral vision, gone as quick as it came. I wheel around, only to see a tiny grocery store etched out among the residential buildings. In the doorway is a gawky adolescent boy, slouching drowsily behind a rusty metal grill that holds a dozen or so burning oval red things.  
The boy brightens when he notices me. "Care to buy a honeyed sweet potato, miss?" he says in a newly deepened voice. "Only a penny each."  
"No, no thank you. I don't have the money." I backtrack closer to him. "Listen, did you by any chance see... _someone_... following me when I walked by?"  
The boy responds with a wide grin. "I'm afraid I haven't, miss. Folks come and go as they pleases, and I hardly pays attention to any of them, lest they buy themselves a sweet potato. Well, I can tell ya right now, miss, across from us there's Mrs. Annie takin' out the laundry, and comin' down the street a ways is that loafer who shows up in me dad's shop once in a whiles to buy himself some cocaine. Unfinished business with any of them ya worried about, miss? Ya afraid they be followin' ya?"  
"No, no. I just..." I shake my head. "Never mind. Thanks."  
"Hey, ya sound like yer not from here, miss. Well, keep in mind that if ya start seein' ghosts and strangers followin' ya, good old detective Sherlock Holmes lives right down at the end that a ways, and he can solve yer cases for a flat fee, guaranteed, and less if the case is trivial. Solved me dad's case of the missin' grain fer only a half a shillin'. Said the buggerin' culprit were some rats."  
"Thanks, I'll remember that."  
"Hey, miss." He regards me with a slightly cocked head. "Yer very pretty. Tell you what. I'll sell ya a sweet potato fer a ha'penny."  
"Thank you, but I don't have any money on me, not even a half penny. Maybe next time."  
"I'll sell one fer a kiss," he replies with a mischevious twinkle in his blue eyes.  
I can't help letting out a laugh. "Next time, mister, I promise."  
"Yer loss, miss!" he calls hoarsely as I walk away, "And a jolly good morning to ya!"  
I wave back at him and continue on my stroll. I pass the corner Chinese laundry when I feel it again, that eerie prickling at the base of my neck. My arms break out into goosebumps beneath my sleeves, and my heartbeat tightens.  
"Want to see my magic book?" a ragged voice whispers from directly behind me.  
I halt in my tracks and spin around in surprise. A short, bearded man dressed in filthy rags and a misshapen hat is peering up at me. Even through my shock, he seems familiar, and it's when he breaks into a snaggletoothed grin that I remember he is the man who leered into my carriage during the night I first went to see Sherlock Holmes, only now, the yellow, feverish dilerium in his eyes has been replaced by the glittering redness of alcohol.  
I swallow down the panic that is rising in my chest. "What do you want?"  
"To show you my magic book, pretty lady," he says, spittle flying. The cold, stinking odor of cheap whiskey wafts to me in the icy air. "No one wants to see it. No one understands it. You look different, so maybe you can understands it."  
"I have no time to see it. Please leave me alone."  
He takes a shaky step closer to me, and I find my strength and break into a run.  
"It opens up and makes letters by itself, pretty lady!" I hear him shouting as I round the corner.  
This stops me dead. I freeze for a second, letting the wild, insane implications of the description sink into my brain, then bolt back in the direction I came, my clumsy skirts flying behind me.  
The old man is still standing beside the laundry, a satisfied grin plastered onto his gaping mouth when I skid to a stop before him. "Ah, interested now, pretty lady?"  
"Did you say it made words? How? Show me!"  
"No, no I did not say it made _words_," the old man interrupts, pointing to himself with a swollen, peeling finger. "I says it makes _letters_. If you press on the wee letter blocks on one half of the inside you can make them show on the other half. I_ suppose_ it can make words if you – "  
I grab the drunk's threadbare sleeve as stars shoot into in my vision. I feel so faint that I'm afraid I'll fold in upon myself and collapse to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I manage, "Show me. Show me your magic book."  
The man's grizzled expression drops from startled amazement to something of suspicion. "You don't wants to take it away from me, pretty lady?"  
"I just want to see it, please!"  
"Promise you won't takes it?"  
"I promise. Please, please show me this book of yours."  
The man sighs theatrically, and takes my wrist in his sweaty, swollen grasp. "Very well. Come with me, pretty lady."  
He pulls me after him and leads me to a nearby alley almost invisibly situated between two indentical buildings. Here, the weak morning sunlight has ceased to make its way through, and the air is significantly murky and cold. Thirty feet in, a massive pile of rotting wooden crates blocks off more than half of the width of the alley, and the loud scrittering of rodents remind me that insects, slime and mold aren't the only things making their residence in the darkness.  
The man makes a ragged flourish. "My humble abode," he announces. "I gots the magic book hidden in the boxes. Inspectors come around so often to take my pretty things, you know."  
"Can you bring out the book now?"  
"But I told you, pretty lady, that the inspectors will see!" he whines impatiently. "You wants to come with me behind the boxes so I can show you safely."  
"I..." I'm going to see a book in which a I can punch in letters on one half and have the letters show up on the other half, I tell myself. Does that sound like anything familiar, Ada? A feeling that has long surpassed curiosity wins over my fear and revulsion of the drunken man. "I'll go with you," I say.  
He grips my wrist tighter between his hands, and we walk into the alley, our footsteps slapping wetly against the broken cobblestones and mud. When we reach the jumble of crates, a chorus of squeals resounds from within, and seven or eight large black rats scatter out from the crevices and disappear into the distance.  
I hold back a scream.  
"Aw, they's just rats, pretty lady," the man coos, laughing. "No need to be frightened. Here, I'll go in first to show you."  
The space between the crates and the opposite wall is so narrow that he can only barely squeeze his squarish body through to the other side. "See?" he says when he has accomplished the task. "No more rats. Now you come in."  
The bottom inch of my skirt rips loudly by an unseen nail or splinter as I slowly follow him, but I barely notice. The man is squatting in the darkness, fumbling through pieces of stray wood and planks. "It's under here. Just a minute and I will show you the magic book, pretty lady."  
He tosses out more planks. "Ah, here – wait, where is it? It's not here." He looks up at me with round, intoxicated and confused eyes.  
"Is it gone?" I demand. "Maybe it's in some different boxes."  
"No, I puts it here ever since I found it in the old cupboard of the empty house, I did!" the man spits back indignantly. "I puts it here for ten whole days, I did! Someone took it! It's gone!"  
"No, no, no. It _can't_ be gone! I'll help you look!" I lean over beside him to bat aside some loose pieces of wood, but the old man's next words lodges my heart in my mouth.  
"_You_ took it, pretty lady," he says, quietly.  
I hastily straighten up. A cold, shivering sweat has started to break out on my forehead, and I realize how hidden I am to the rest of Baker Street. "I did not take your book, sir."  
"Yes, yes you did! It's gone now, when you comes along!" He jumps to his feet and grabs both of my arms before I can dart away, violently shaking me. "Give me my magic book!"  
"I don't have it, I swear! You're drunk! Let go! Help! Oh God, somebody help me!"  
His nails are digging into my skin like ten crescent knives as he forces me to the crates. A small avalanche of rotten wood tumbles down, sealing off what is left of the narrow path out. My back is exploding in fiery agony, and I feel the warm sticky wetness of my blood on my skin.  
The drunken man has crushed himself on top of me, and suddenly I realize through my numbing panic what he's planning to do. I kick at him with my heels and pummel him with my fists, screaming, and when he finally howls in pain and releases an arm, I fumble for the nearest wooden plank.  
I almost bring it down into his shoulder, but he wrenches it away and presses it to my throat so viciously I can't breathe. "Where's my magic book!" His filthy stinking whiskey spit and sour sweat drip into my face. "Where's my magic book!"  
I choke something out, but already black voids are exploding like painful fireworks behind my eyes and I am struggling to keep conscious. I think of Tony and the times he fought with me in his drunken fits, violating me and hitting me and choking me until I prayed to die. Too bad that I am going to finally die here in a dreary London alleyway, forgotten and lost.  
Pain is pleasure, I say to myself almost sarcastically. I give the man one last kick with the remainder of my energy, and fall back limply as the desperate fire in my lungs envelop my limbs. Pain in pleasure. I close my eyes and surrender. Let him do what he wants.  
Then suddenly the pressure at my throat disappears. A split second later, I feel that the man is no longer pressed like a boulder on top of me, as I hear a savage punch being delivered, a strangled shout, and a loud clammoring of boxes. "Get away from her!" an all too familiar voice roars, and is answered by the sound of footsteps retreating frantically out of the alleyway and into the street.  
A short silence, then: "Ada, Ada." And then a pair of strong hands are around me, lifting me from the jagged bed of crates.  
"Holmes," I whisper before I even open my eyes. When I do, I find myself staring into the raw, gray gaze of a man in a dirty, tattered suit and dilapidated brown hat. "Holmes?"  
"Do not speak. Your throat is damaged by the weapon," Sherlock Holmes says in the even tone he uses to address business clients, but I can hear the emotion behind it, fighting to break through.  
He lowers himself to his knees, gathers me to him, and with me still in his arms he falls back to a sitting position against the damp, brick wall. He's breathing hard, and I feel his heartbeat pounding in a forceful rhythm next to mine. The obvious questions float through my mind, for the moment unheeded. How did he know I was here? Why is he wearing the clothes of a destitute man? I am too exhausted to ask, so I rest my head in the space between his chin and shoulder blade, and revel in the feeling that I have been rescued.  
And then I remember the magic book. I snap my head back up, making a move to stand. "Holmes! Where is he! Where did he go?"  
Holmes continues to hold me down. "Ada, do not struggle so! You are injured and you cannot possibly walk. Now do not speak!"  
I ignore him. I grab the front of his shirt despite the pain in my fingers, and shove my face so it's an inch in front of his. "Remember, Holmes, our little conversation this morning, and you said that you wanted to know more about laptop computers? Well, _this man has one_. He didn't actually show me but he described it in perfect detail. He said it was a magic book that opened up, and you could type the words in on one side and have it show up on the other. Holmes, he was describing a twenty first century invention! Now I don't know how or why – "  
"Ada, I beg of you. This man has harmed you. If you please – "  
"No, damn it, Holmes, listen. Another object out of my time has fallen into this century! I need to find the man again. I need to go to that empty house where he found the laptop and see maybe if – "  
"Ada," he says softly. His serious gray eyes are so dialated they almost appear black. "The man had described a typewriter, my girl, and nothing more. And now you must think no further of this heathen drunkard's words."  
"No, he said it was a magic book! A typewriter isn't shaped like a book! It's far too big and it doesn't open up like one!"  
"A typewriter is often packaged inside of a box with a hinged lid. It is highly probable that he found a discarded typewriter in the refuse of the deserted house you mentioned. He opens the lid and presses down a few of the keys. The corresponding letters are imprinted on the paper that is still set within the machine. Ada, let us talk no more of this matter at this time. I will take you back to our lodgings and I will inform Dr. Watson immediately of your condition."  
"But why didn't he say it was a typewriter? Why did he call it a magic book?"  
"Because that is the name of the particular brand of typewriter that hails from Liverpool." I feel him sighing heavily, and suddenly for a dreadful moment I think I can see a small shimmer of wetness in his eyes. He quickly turns his gaze from me and glances up at the faraway strip of sky above the alley. "It is the truth."  
I have collapsed once again like a rag doll against him. Holmes's usual perfectly logical explanation leaves me numb, and I'm not sure if I should feel incensed or relieved or thankful. There is a gaping hole in my heart where fragile hope used to be. "I don't know anything anymore, Holmes," I whisper.  
"Know that you are now safe."  
"I know that I am incredibly_ stupid_."  
"You are in the wrong, Ada."  
"Holmes, if you didn't come, I would be dead right now. But after I left you put on a disguise and followed me, didn't you? Oh God, I should be angry at you, but I'm not."  
In reply, Holmes gently lifts one hand away from my back and brings it between us. I see that his knuckles are swollen and bruised, and that smeared on his palm are dark, crimson streaks of my blood. He raises his hand to my face, and with the tips of his long, tapered fingers where there is no stain, slowly strokes my cheek. His skin is dry and warm.  
"It never has been – and it never is – my intention to cause you pain. Though I am a deeply analytical man, a fact which you are well aware, I lack certain insights, and for every wrong I have inadvertently committed against you during your stay, Miss Cooper, I beg of you to forgive me."  
  
..........  
  
Holmes carries me back to 221b Baker Street, stoically avoiding the shocked glances of the passerby. When we walk past the grocery, the adolescent selling sweet potatoes yelps to me, "What in God's name is the good fer nothin' loafer doin' with ya, miss? Miss? Miss!" The children playing in the cobblestone street stare unabashedly at us as we approach, and their rubber ball bounces forgotten into a hidden crevice between the buildings.  
When we enter the house, Holmes places me gently down into my bed and lays a warm blanket over me.  
"I will seek Watson immediately," he says, nodding and turning to leave.  
"But your clothes..."  
"Watson is familiar with my guise, Miss Cooper. And besides, your need is more urgent than mine. Do try to rest and sleep."  
After he's gone, I hold my hands to my face and cry quietly, not out of fear for what has happened, but for the little bit of false hope that sprang up so naively in me and then quickly died.  
  
..........  
  
To be continued....  
  
Note: The "Magic Book" brand of typewriter from Liverpool is something I made up completely. Haha. Thanks to all of you who keep reviewing! You guys are awesome. I hope I'm keeping you guys on your toes. 


	7. Chapter Seven

Note: Sorry for not updating for a while, but I had writer's block on this fic when I didn't know which direction I wanted to plot to take. But now everything's figured out, so here we go.  
  
**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl  
  
Chapter Seven  
  
My back burns with a thousand cuts and scrapes, my throat aches from the pressure of the wooden plank, and my twisted ankle swells painfully beneath a layer of newly wrapped gauze. I cringe into the pillow beneath my face as Watson applies yet another swathe of searingly sharp alcohol solution to my bare back.  
"I am deeply sorry, Miss Cooper, but this procedure is crucial to your well-being," the doctor says. The cloth leaves my skin momentarily, and I hear him dip it into a liquid-filled enamel basin. "While the wounds themselves are but superficial, we must prevent any possibility of a more grave infection."  
"I'm okay," I begin to assure him, but the renewed onslaught of the washcloth makes me cry out instead.  
"Watson!"  
Holmes. He has been standing by the window, his eyes staring blankly out into the sunless street and his lit pipe wrapping a little cocoon of smoke around his motionless body, but now he turns abruptly to us, and the smoke disperses like ghostly water droplets.  
"Yes, Holmes?" the other man replies.  
"For heaven's sake, do endeavor to be more... more..."  
"More careful?" Watson guesses, sounding inwardly amused. "It is not a matter of my being careful. This medicine will sting our young friend dreadfully, regardless of the manner in which I apply it to her wounds. Trust me, my dear Holmes, I have successfully cared for patients on the battlefields of Afghanistan who have sported mutilations far more grievous than these."  
Holmes doesn't reply. His clear gray eyes dart to mine for the briefest of instants before averting to the floor, and he wheels around, his arms crossed tightly in front of him and his shoulders slightly hunched. "She is not a hardened soldier of Afghanistan," he mumbles at last.  
I can't resist. "Are you saying I have a low tolerance of pain, Holmes?"  
"I say what is fact, Miss Cooper," he answers to the window, "and nothing more and nothing less."  
"You can say all the facts you want, but I know what you _mean_. You think I'm weak and frail."  
"Assume what you will. I have several cases of interest waiting for me in the study which merit my attention, and now if you will pardon me, Miss Cooper, I will leave you in the hands of the good doctor." Giving a small nod, Holmes steps away from his spot beside the window and exits the room without another glance in my direction.  
After several minutes of quietly soaking my back with the fiery solution, Watson finally breaks the silence. "I do believe the man has changed quite profoundly," he whispers, as though to himself.  
I twist my head around to stare at the doctor. "Changed? How?"  
"If you recall, Miss Cooper, on that day several weeks ago when we were first introduced, Holmes paid almost no heed to the fact that you were – most inappropriately attired – for the situation. However, today he has kept a considerable distance from you for the past hour that we have been in this room."  
"And... what are you suggesting?"  
"Sherlock Holmes has learned respectable manners at last." Watson smiles wanly and rinses the washcloth in the basin. As he squeezes the excess solution from the cloth, I think I hear him add under his breath, "And perhaps something more."  
"What did you say, Watson?"  
"I said that you need one application more of the medicine," he replies. "Can you kindly turn so that your wounds face more directly toward me?"  
"No, that wasn't what you said."  
Watson regards me with a vaguely sad and pitying look. "You _must _try to exercise more caution, Miss Cooper. If you may permit me to say so, you are indeed weak and frail, but only as much as I, and only as much as Holmes. As a doctor and a widely traveled man, I have learned that we men and women are all bound in this world by the same weaknesses and frailties. Holmes's error is that he never believed you could be truly touched by the troubles of our times. To him, you are... the invincible Pallas Athena stepping down from Olympus to offer him all that his mind has hungered for. But with this unfortunate accident that has befallen you, he has finally realized – "  
I sigh heavily into the pillow. "He realized that I'm nothing that a time traveler's cracked up to be."  
"No, Miss Cooper. He has realized that you are a woman."  
"Watson?" I feel my heart skipping beats inside of me. "What do you mean?" I demand.  
"I... never mind. I have already said too much on a topic that barely pertains to me." The doctor gives a little shake of his head and a quick, apologetic smile. "Ready yourself for the medicine."  
As he slides the cloth along my burning back, my mind drifts to that tall and gaunt detective named Holmes, and I can't push out of my mind the memory of us in the alley, his arms wrapped firmly around me, his cheek pressed to the side of my forehead, and his arrogant mouth drawn with something that almost seemed like fear.  
  
..........  
  
The days drag on more slowly than I could have ever imagined. On Dr. Watson's orders, I spend most of my time in bed, lying on uncomfortably on my stomach with my throbbing ankle resting on some pillows. At first I tried to sleep the hours away, but each time I closed my eyes the dreams attacked me in full force, filling me with images of the beautiful Irene Adler and the man in white and Mary Kelly. And each time Irene Adler would laugh into my face, goading with those horrible red, devouring lips, "I told so!" as the man in white slashes a glinting metal needle the size of a sword before me. Only Mary Kelly would call to me imploringly from the fringes of the headlights, "Please, do not lose hope, Ada. _Believe_!" and I see that she would desperately clutch a disintegrating black laptop computer in her shredded arms as if it is the only thing that can save her doomed soul.  
I sleep as little as possible after that, preferring to waste away my time with Holmes's dry, densely written books instead. The only relief from the tedious boredom is when Watson stops by in the mornings for a visit and a brief chat, and when Holmes plays a simple violin tune from the study in the evenings. Holmes and I have stopped our conversations beside the fireplace, and I unwillingly find myself missing the way he gazed distantly at me as I carried on about the smallest and most familiar things in my life: guitar picks and buses and Gothic clothing.  
In fact, we don't talk much at all anymore. We murmur the minimum hellos and thank yous when he comes to bring me my meals, but aside from those exchanges it's difficult to look into his gray eyes and not be reminded of the moment when he saved me in the alley. And sometimes I hear Watson's words in my mind: "He has realized that you are a woman," and a tingling thrill courses through my bones.  
I'm aware of Holmes's presence and absence in the rooms as if a part of me has attached itself onto him. The dry crinkling of paper and the faint flickering glow of the fireplace seeping beneath my door tell me when he is reading the newspaper in the study, and the soft, even sounds of his breaths tell me when he is sleeping. When he leaves for afternoon investigations with a client, the curls of tobacco smoke that has been gathering all morning quickly evaporates, and the house is left silent and empty and cold.  
Outside, the temperature drops as the winter settles in, and the rain spills over in frigid splatters upon the windowpanes and cobblestone streets.  
One solitary afternoon in early December it's so cold that I ease myself from my bed and hobble into Holmes's room to borrow an extra blanket. It's only when I enter that I realize this is the first time I've ever been inside Sherlock Holmes's bedroom, and suddenly I'm nervous and excited like a small child who has just stumbled into an unexplored hidden wing of a castle.  
Around me the wallpaper is in the same dark red design as the wallpaper in the study, but here the patterned extravagance is oddly out of place. Holmes's room consists of only an unmade bed, a simple table, a plain chair and a bookshelf holding more magazines and newspaper clippings than books. Blurry photographs of suspicious men, ominous houses, and seemingly usual objects are lopsidedly tacked to the wall with pins and small knives. Not surprisingly, Irene Adler's photograph is nowhere to be seen.  
The chair beside the table is laden with Holmes's threadbare purple robe and countless pieces of other clothing. I walk to it slowly, nervous and unable to turn away, and run my fingers through the ragged velvet trim of the robe. I wore this once, I think unsteadily, and almost pick it up to press my cheek to the soft velvet before I remember whose this is and where I am.  
I turn my attention to the other clothes, tossed and hung haphazardly onto the chair. There is a long black overcoat, a dark brown jacket, a pair of black trousers, and a white collared shirt with chipped ivory cufflinks. Beneath the shirt rests a large, neatly folded square of a familiar soft and black fabric, and it takes me a while to recognize the Goth dress I wore on the night I fell into this city. The bitter cigarette traces from Tony – a name that strangely holds no more impact in my mind when I whisper it to myself – and the streaks from the rain and mud have all been carefully cleaned away, and I gently poke the shiny silk with a curious detachment as if I am touching a preserved museum relic.  
I pile the shirts and jackets back on the chair, but not before I wonder what Holmes will think when he returns from his investigation and sees that his clothes have been disturbed. He will immediately know that I'm the culprit, of course, and I imagine his ensuing line of questioning: "Miss Cooper, why were you in my room? And most importantly, why have you been running your hands through my garments?"  
I smile a little giddily to myself. He will know of my presence, and he will analyze me suspiciously when my back is turned, but he will save us both from the unspoken implications and so he will never ask.  
I leave the chair and limp up to the table. Holmes's violin rests crookedly on top of a pile of dusty books and yellowing newspapers, threatening to fall. I glide my thumb along the thin strings, drawing out an inexperienced and hollow chord in slightly dissonant fifths, and move the instrument to a more secure place next to the books.  
That's when I notice the glass bottle on the corner of the table. The clear liquid inside is more than three fourths full, and I'm uncertain if this bottle is the same one I saw that day on the bookshelf. Behind it, a thin white and shiny gray object is partly concealed by the bottle and the edge of a small paper box. I push aside the box and bottle.  
It is a syringe.  
And suddenly the miniature drama plays out upon the table like the last episode of a television soap opera, and I remember what the adolescent selling sweet potatoes said to me – "comin' down the street a ways is that loafer who shows up in me dad's shop once in a whiles to buy himself some cocaine" – and I remember Holmes's ratty disguise, and now I read the label on the empty paper box beside the bottle:  
  
**Cocaine  
In A Seven-Per-Cent Solution  
One Glass Container  
**  
and everything makes perfect sense.  
I think I was holding my breath, because now my chest aches and my head feels light and I suck in air hoarsely. I take the sleek syringe between trembling fingers and see that on the base of the needle there is a small black dot of dried blood.  
"Why?" I gasp aloud to no one.  
But as if in answer, the next thing I hear is Holmes's voice behind me, demanding harshly, "Miss Cooper, what are you doing in my room?"  
  
...........  
  
For a delirious second I wonder if I should simply throw aside the syringe and say that I was admiring his violin. It would save the scene and save what fragile thread of understanding remained between us. But it's too late, and I have already turned around to face him, brandishing the syringe in one hand and the bottle in the other. "_Cocaine_, Mr. Holmes?"  
"Miss Cooper..." he says darkly. His face does not carry the irritated expression I have often seen directed toward me, but a look of complete shock and anger.  
"Tell me this is evidence for a case, Holmes."  
"Why are you in my room?"  
"Why are you taking cocaine?" I sigh. "Holmes, isn't smoking enough? Tell me, what other methods are you using to slowly kill yourself? Staying up all night for two to three nights on end? Not eating? And don't forget that other drug that's so popular in this century. What is it called? Morphine? Are you using that too?"  
From the way his eyes narrow to dark slits, I realize with a sinking heart that my wild guess is probably not too far from the truth. "None of this is your business, Miss Cooper, so do not presume you can treat it as so!" he shouts, making a grab for the syringe. I yank my hand away, ducking under his arm and hopping on my good foot out of the room.  
I reach the bookshelf at the end of the study when he takes me roughly by my wrist and steps close in front of me. "Miss Cooper, I am not playing games. Give those items to me now."  
"I'm not playing either, Holmes! This is wrong! I never, ever expected this! That – that..." That you are less than perfect, I finish silently, and my indignant anger surges to match his. "That you would sink so low!"  
He smirks at me, without any humor. "I am a consulting detective, not a saint."  
"Obviously!" I glance around me swiftly, and seeing that Holmes has newly lit a small fire in the fireplace beside the bookshelf, I fling the syringe and bottle into the flames.  
We are both silent as we watch the bottle break into three pieces against the sooty back wall with a tinny, musical tinker, the liquid inside escaping and evaporating with a hiss and a wisp of steam. The body of the syringe shatters completely when it lands into the flames, and the needle flies free and lodges into a piece of firewood. In the heat, it glows red for a defiant moment, then wilts into a puddle that slides into the depths of the ashes.  
"How _dare_ you?" Holmes advances toward me, and I have no choice but to retreat the short distance to the edge of the bookshelf, stopping only when the wooden slats cut into my injured back like knives. His eyes bore into mine with a look of undeniable anger and something else I can't quite recognize. And then he raises his hand and I sickeningly think that he's going to hit me, slap me across the face like Tony did so many times before.  
Holmes brings the heel of his hand against the side of the shelf, and the books give shuffling jolts. "How dare you, Miss Cooper?" He exhales, wearily. The anger drains out his stare and now he only looks lost. "How dare you."  
I'm suddenly aware that he is standing almost fully against me. I sense the pressure of his heaving breaths all along my body, and I hear his heartbeat drumming in his chest like a muted drum. He smells of the cool rain and blustery wind outside mixed with the smoky essence of tobacco, and I know I'm crazy, or the damn weather and my twisted ankle has made me crazy, but I want to fall into his embrace and hold my cheek to his collarbone and breathe in his scent until the night descends upon us.  
I bite my bottom lip. "Were you going to hit me, Holmes?" I ask in a wavering voice.  
"I beg your pardon!" He jerks as though he has been shot. "No intention of the sort even crossed my mind."  
Unwanted tears are stinging my eyes, and holding them back is a war I am quickly losing. I feel them slide down my face, one by one in little tickling lines, and I'm furious at myself for not being strong enough to prevent their quiet yet deadly attack. "Oh, I pissed you off, didn't I?" I snap at Holmes. "You looked like you were going to hit me. I think you really were going to, I really do."  
"For God's sake, Miss Cooper, I am a learned man and not a – a _brute_."  
"No, Holmes, all guys are the same. You pride yourself on being different, but now I know you're really not. You _were_ going to hit me."  
"Ada..." There. I've hurt him. It's written plainly in his tiny confused frown, his barely parted lips, and his haunted gray eyes overshadowed by a lock of hair. I stuck in the cruel knife of words and I twisted it and now I've hurt him ten times worse than he hurt me when I discovered his dirty secret. But instead of gloating in triumph, I can only let out a small, choked sob as the tears pour down my face in earnest.  
"God, Holmes, I... didn't mean it. I'm so..."  
But he beats me to it. In a barely audible, broken voice, he murmurs, "I am truly sorry, Ada. Forgive me if you possibly can, for I have caused you great pain."  
My heart feels like it's falling apart. "No, Holmes, I'm sorry. It's all me – "  
"You are ill and need to rest. Come. I will assist you." He steps away from me, and I shiver as though the temperature has plummeted thirty degrees. He wraps one arm gently and hesitantly around my shoulder and holds out his other arm to support my hands, and he leads me away from the bookshelf to my room.  
By the time I collapse into the bed, my tears have blinded my vision with washed out, kaleidoscope colors. I tighten my hold on him, refusing to let him walk away. "Holmes, _please_. What I did was wrong."  
"It is very cold in here, Ada. You will need extra covers," he says, lifting my hand from his arm.  
"Don't go."  
"I am simply retrieving the covers from the closet. I will return shortly."  
When Holmes comes back he lays two wool blankets over me and wordlessly gives me a large white handkerchief. He stands there at my bedside for a second more, fidgeting his long and elegant fingers, until at last he shakes himself from his indecision and moves to go. His head is lowered, and in the dim light his face is somber and pensive and hopeless, as though he has surrendered to a force he was long trying to fight.  
"You will be the end of me, Ada," I hear him whisper as he walks away.  
I want to ask him what he means by that, but there are so many other things I want to say to him, so many apologies to give and confessions to make, that I'm overwhelmed by the jumble of words in my mind and I simply remain quiet as I hold the handkerchief to my mouth and watch him exit the room and softly close the door behind him.  
  
..........  
  
To be continued...  
  
Ooh, the angst kicks in. Or at least I hope it's kicking in. Anyway, please review or flame, depending on your taste.  
  
Pallas Athena, or just Athena, is the Greek goddess of wisdom.


	8. Chapter Eight

Note: Sorry, guys, for the long wait. Travels prevented me from writing this for a month, and when I got home, the Olympics started, so I was (and still am) glued to the TV about, oh, six hours every day. But I still found time to write, so gather up your reading glasses, and "on with the motley, or whatever that means!" (Props to the person who knows who the quote's from.)

**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl

Chapter Eight

I wake from my senseless reoccurring nightmare by the quiet sound of crying. In the deathly still of a winter's midnight, I can hear the sobs and jagged breaths float in clearly through the walls, and it's not long before I've gained enough alertness to realize where the sound is coming from.

I bolt up in the bed, forgetting about the pain in my back and ankles as a cold sweat breaks over me and I'm consumed by a sickening dread. Because, impossibly, the cries are coming from Sherlock Holmes's room.

I don't move for a long time, just listening to the heart wrenching sound. I'm reminded of the first time I heard my mother cry, and of the time my professor broke down in front of the classroom when he learned of his favorite student's death. I was more frightened and self=conscious than sympathetic as I watched him, almost refusing to believe that the display of raw emotion from someone you always thought could never be touched by pain was real. And then, inside my stricken mind, I was on my knees and pleading to him, oh God, stop it. Just stop. Stop this and we can both forget about it and we can go back to the cold impersonality where we were before. Once I comfort you and admit your weaknesses, then we can never be the same again...

But – _something_ – drags me from my bed and to my feet, and as if in a dream, I limp across the cold, blackened study and pause shivering at Holmes's door. Through the tiny open sliver, the choked sobs drift out even louder, and this time I think I can detect almost a hint of physical pain in the sound.

My head is swimming in so many different emotions I don't even know what I'm feeling anymore, and I push open the door with a hesitant hand.

Holmes's curtains are undrawn, and through the windowpanes, naked, cold blue moonlight floods into the room. The icy glow illuminates the figure huddled on the bed, whose covers are in a tangle about him and whose body is wracked in uncontrollable shivers.

The next thing I know, I'm kneeling at the detective's bedside, grabbing his arm and shaking him. "Holmes? Holmes? Are you okay?"

He's asleep, and struggling inside of a private hell. He rolls unsteadily toward me, and I can see the beads of sweat over his forehead, cheeks, and tightly closed eyes. His dark hair is wet and matted like black tendrils onto the pillow. When I reach out to touch his face, his flushed, damp skin scorches my fingertips.

"God, Holmes, wake up!" I give him another firm shake, and he groans, his eyelids fluttering open. He stares at me deliriously in the dim moonlight, still shivering violently. "Who – Ada?" he manages brokenly between his gasping breaths. "Ada, it's – cold. I need—"

"You're ill, Holmes. You have a fever. Hold on a minute, let me get you some more blankets—"

"No." He traps my wrist within his thin, burning fingers and pulls me close. I don't think that in his sick and half-awake condition he realizes what he's doing, but I wrap my arms about him anyway, and now his shivers are coursing through me as he gathers me into his trembling, hot embrace. "No," he whispers into my ear. "No, it is not that... not that..."

"Not what?"

"The fever – the fever. The woman – I saw _the_ woman – in my dreams."

"Irene?"

"No, no – ah, God, it's cold..." He holds me so tightly that I must be suffocating. I run my hand down his back, feeling through the thin velvet of his robe the ridges of his spine, made pronounced after years of regularly skipped meals and nightly vigils. His fluttering heartbeat reverberates through my palm, and right then I want to stay with him forever in this breathless moment.

"Holmes, it'll be okay. You're sick and you had a nightmare."

"She was not Irene and yet she was… that woman in my dream," he mumbles incomprehensibly, his mouth pressed into my hair. "I – do not remember her name – strange, foreign name. Perhaps it is Madame... Madame – something. Ada, I do not remember – please. I need my seven percent – oh, forgive me. Forgive me – for everything... I can't... the name..."

What he says stirs something unsettling in me, but I hush him gently, and softly stroke the base of his neck with my fingers. "Remember when I had a nightmare and you came into my room and stayed the whole evening? You said that nightmares were nothing, really, so whatever name you heard in your dream doesn't matter, Holmes." I murmur to him. He seems to be calmed somewhat by my voice, so I continue on. "You don't need to remember. Just sleep, and tomorrow, when Watson comes, he'll get you some medicine and your fever will be better. I'll stay here if you want. Or I can go. Holmes. Holmes?"

He is either asleep, or lost again inside his feverish delirium. But he is still holding me in that awkward embrace, and I gingerly and almost reluctantly detach myself from him. But I don't leave. Instead, I kneel beside the bed, leaning against it and resting my head on the corner of the soft down pillow that partly extends over the edge.

And I simply gaze into his face for what seems like hours, feeling his breaths and fluttering heartbeats as if they are pressed close to me, and it's only when the pain has passed through his features that I slowly allow my eyelids to relax. And somewhere in that ethereal state between consciousness and sleep the smallest ghost of a memory comes fluttering up – Tony, I mutter in confusion, the name weightless and grey like smoke – and evaporates into the foggy air.

..........

In my mist-filled dream I am attacking him with furious words. "How did you know her name, Sherlock? _How_!"

"Please." He is crouched in a corner, his palms pressed to his ears. "Please, this was not supposed to happen. Forget everything, Ada, my love, I beg of you."

"But how did you know _her_? It's not... it's not _logical_!"

"If _she_ is revealed to us the world will unravel... and all will be lost. I am begging you. Close your eyes and forget all that you've learned. Ignorance... ignorance is bliss."

_Unreal city._

"Sherlock, this isn't you talking! You would never say such a thing."

"Your ignorance will allow me to live for another day," he strains behind clenched teeth. And it is as if a waterfall has escaped from him and he roars out, sobbing, "God, Ada, if you have any_ heart _in you!"

"No, it's not you, Sherlock! It's not you!"

He stares at me from the depths of his twin, fiery gray coronas. All is wrapped in silence. Then, smiling wanly, he says, "You are right."

And it is not he anymore. It is the woman with the red lips. Her smile is frozen for a moment in frigid sneering contempt, but the hard edges melt away like ice from a sculpture on a warm day, and I'm left staring into a pitying, understanding, condescending, and ethereally beautiful face.

"You know, Ada," she says, her voice echoing volumeless through all corners of my mind, "I am not... evil. I know you automatically think so because he almost began to love me, so many months ago." I can almost hear the haughty stress on the word "me," or is it merely my own imagination? "Yes, I can see through your jealousy like a laser through a glass prism. You can deny it, but you know that it is true."

I should be slapping this demoness, this sorcerer, but I'm forced to listen.

She continues more soothingly, "We women share this protective instinct of our men, Ada – and especially when they are hurt and in need of our help. You can think about it however you like... you may believe in Freud's theories, for example, or you may believe the maternal instinct, if you remember the textbook you read in biology class in sophomore year. Or you may believe in... love." She smiles again. "Regardless, you want to protect him. And so do I. Ada, do not worry, I do not love him in the way that a woman loves a man. You must know that there are many, many ways to love, and my feelings for him – which are more like feelings of _fascination_ than anything else – does not in any way compete with yours. Naturally I did not want to become romantically involved with him, so that is why I left him before his romantic love for me could take root and blossom into a million different complications that could seriously harm us both. So, please, Ada, do not search for me within yourself, do not search for me within _him_."

"But I am on the _verge_—"

"Verge of discovery, yes," she finishes for me. A distant part of me tells me that we are one, that this is my own dream, but she feels so real. "Yes, I _told _Doctor Jack that three milligrams were not enough for you, but you know how these men are..."

I can see the headlights, and the man in the white surgeon's coat, and the body of Mary Kelly all at once pushing me away and beckoning to me. Somewhere, the blinding glint of the business end of a syringe cuts through the swirling gloom like a double-edged sword.

"I want to know," I say to Irene Adler. "I want to know what has happened to me."

She shakes her head. "It is complicated now. It is not only about _you_ now, is it? What about the man lying next to you? Can you bear to do that to him, Ada? Can you rip away all of the pitifully few things in life he holds dear? I told him to fear death by water, but he refused to listen to me and he continued to inject the vile substance into his veins, and he continued to leave the bottles lying indiscreetly about the house. And now that you have discovered the bottle of poisoned water and taken it away from him... it will lead to his death. Or it will lead to a fate worse than death, Ada. _Separation._"

"What are you talking about?"

She ignores me. "You have two choices now. You may go on your little mental road to discovery – _alone_, or you may allow yourself to immerse yourself into him and allow him to immerse himself into you."

"I want to do both, Madame Sosostris."

"Then both of you will suffer, and separation will destroy you all." In her hands are a pack of cards, the _wickedest_ pack of cards in Europe, and when she fans them out, all I can see is doom. "Choose," she demands like an icicle piercing into my heart. "You or him?"

From the outer reaches of my subconscious I hear a pained cry, and I feel a trembling hand finding my fingers, and feverish shudders that are not mine are breaking into the boundaries of my sleep... and I choose without words.

I wake up to daybreak, and Sherlock Holmes on the bed beside me.

..........

I have already been waiting for Dr. Watson's arrival for what seems like days when he comes knocking a few hours after sunrise. I practically rip off the bolt and fling open the front door.

"Watson, he's sick."

"Wha – excuse me?" The doctor's slightly drowsy and thoroughly shocked face greets me from the hallway. I grab his arm and pull him inside before he can even find his bearings.

"Sick," I repeat hoarsely, kicking the door shut with my injured foot and receiving a protesting surge of pain in reply. "Holmes is sick. I think he has a fever. It's pretty bad, and it got better during the night but it's worse now."

"Sick! Holmes? Surely not!" Simultaneously we rush to the detective's room, Watson stopping in the doorway as I hurry to Holmes' side and take his pale, clenched and wiry hand within my own. "Look at him," I demand to the doctor. "Tell me what's wrong."

"In all my years with him I have never seen him like this," Watson replies tightly.

The confession sears though me so painfully I barely even notice the doctor's peculiar stare on me as I smooth the damp hair away from Holmes' forehead and stroke his stubbled cheek. Low, hoarse breaths escape him as he trembles thinly under the tangled blankets.

Watson moves next to me and quickly parts Holmes' eyelid with two fingers. He peers into the black, dilated pupil that has almost swallowed up the entire gray iris, and leans back with a short sigh. Then abruptly, a thought seems to strike him and he runs to the cluttered table nearby, rummaging through the papers and books with great swipes. "Where in God's earth did he put that infernal substance?"

"What are you looking for?"

"Miss Cooper—" He turns to me, panting beneath his ruffled mustache. "Have you happened to notice, by any chance, a small glass bottle—"

"The cocaine," I interrupt.

"The – Miss Cooper! But how did you know?"

"I found the bottle yesterday. He tried to stop me, but I threw it into the fireplace anyway."

"Then it _is_ true!" Watson runs his hands roughly through his thick hair and glares at me in a mixture of exasperation and annoyance bordering on anger. "Holmes tried to stop you because he knew that the effects of sudden deprivation from the drug could be truly wretched. And now he is grievously sick from the lack of it, Miss Cooper."

The ghost of my most recent dream stirs my stomach. "Oh, my God." And suddenly I feel hot liquid spilling from my eyes and streaking down my cheeks. "Will he _die_?"

Watson must have seen my expression because now the anger visibly deflates from him, and gives way to a more tolerant tone. "No, no, Miss Cooper, the chance of actual death is negligible. _But_, of Sherlock Holmes' vices, this seven percent solution is unarguably the worst. He has become dependent on it, despite his hatred and loathing of the drug, and to deprive him of it without _gradual_ weaning means that he will be gravely ill for days if not weeks. Do you understand now?"

"I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry." I don't know whom I'm apologizing to: Holmes, or Watson. I squeeze the detective's hand tighter in my grasp. "If I had known," I repeat to the man standing beside me.

Nodding once, Watson tucks a stray side of Holmes' blanket into place around the detective's body. Then he reaches for a chair and sinks into it gracelessly and a little wearily, all the while peering into me as though searching me for a satisfying answer to a private question. "I _would_ travel to the local grocery for another bottle of the seven percent solution, Miss Cooper," he concludes at last, shaking off his momentary daze "but the act of bringing home yet another new supply of misery does not appeal to me. Perhaps it is better that he is cured of his addiction the more difficult way. He will less likely want to revert back to his former habit."

"And what can we do now?"

Watson inhales deeply and his eyes drop to his hands, which are laced together and resting between his knees. "We let him sleep, and when he wakes, we will make him drink plenty of fluids, despite his pleas to be left alone – and we are both sure to receive them, Miss Cooper – and I will request that Mrs. Hudson concoct for him meals of thin rice gruel and steamed vegetables for at least three days. He will certainly be in a foul mood, and perhaps even delirious. We will need to try our best to keep him comfortable, while at the same time keeping our nerves more or less intact."

"All – all right. I thank you, Doctor Watson."

He doesn't reply for a long time, and when he does, it's with a small growl of frustration that I have never before witnessed from the pleasant English gentleman. "By God, how he infuriates me, Miss Cooper!"

"Doctor Watson?"

"Sherlock Holmes is a singular man, a most singular man. While his intelligence and skills of deduction are beyond parallel, not _once_ does he stop to think of the effects his actions may have upon others. Here we sit at his bedside, Miss Cooper, wringing ourselves dry with worry over how he has polluted his body, and in a week's time we will receive but a pat on the back, and he will once again be immersed in cases in which he will _willingly_ deprive himself of both food and sleep for days. Not once does he show to us any sort of – any sort of – does England's greatest detective not realize _anything_?"

My heart has either started to beat very rapidly, or it's only now that I've noticed it. I look to Holmes, his proud and stubborn mouth, his closed eyes registering no sign of having been awakened from his tumultuous sleep. But with Holmes you could never be sure. "He might be listening," I say to Watson. "Last time we talked alone, Holmes was eavesdropping."

"Let him! The man is too deeply enveloped inside his own tobacco cloud to know others' opinions of his atrocious ways, nor care, for that matter. Miss Cooper, it is time he knew. It is time he knew how we despise him."

I glance up at the doctor's gloomy frown. And it takes less than half a second for me to see the respect, admiration, and undying love for his friend, glistening in his worried eyes. The words from my dream tumble from me unimpeded. "There are many ways to love, Dr. Watson. Holmes' way is just... different from the rest of the world's. But it doesn't mean that he doesn't love—"

"Love!" Watson scoffs lightly, shaking his head. "I am a married man, and I married for love. I know firsthand of its joys and sacrifices. To what, or whom, has Holmes given sacrifice?"

"He gave it for me."

Silence.

After what must be an eternity on pause, the doctor cuts in as I'm still trying to organize my thoughts. His question, asked in a tone as if he were standing on fragile ice, mirrors my own. "What exactly do you mean, Miss Cooper?"

"I mean... I don't want to sound like a damsel in distress, but he _saved_ me that day when I was being attacked, Dr. Watson. He could have been killed. I think that counts as sacrifice."

Watson nods slowly. His pensive, questioning gaze doesn't leave me, but gradually his eyebrows lift up in what seems like dawning realization. And suddenly we are both looking at my small and smooth hand entangled in Holmes' large, spidery, chiseled hand.

Almost alarmingly I yank my hand away. For a second it hovers in the air, cold and awkward, before I run it through my tangle of dark hair. "Dr. Watson, I'm tired," I say, more loudly than I wanted to. "I think I'll just go to my room."

"What do you feel for Sherlock Holmes, Ada?" Watson asks instead. It is the most difficult question he has ever uttered, and I can hear it. Memories of the first night I spoke with Watson come sifting into my ears. "I pray you do not drag such a harmless stranger into your web," he said. Funny how that the doctor's words sound like a prophecy now, a sort of strange prophecy that I can only think of as having been fulfilled.

"I feel... I don't know what I feel for him, but I _know_ that you weren't exactly right, Dr. Watson."

"What do you refer to?"

I'm no longer answering him. I'm answering myself. Staring at the closed and lightly quivering eyelids of the detective lying on the bed, I whisper, "You see, he didn't _drag_ me in. I think I walked in on my own."

..........

To be continued...

Note: The next chapter _will_ contain some new revelations, I promise you.


	9. Chapter Nine

**HEADLIGHTS  
**By Hallospacegirl

Chapter Nine 

When Holmes finally wakes from his delirium in the golden sunshine of the late afternoon, a powerful urge comes over me, a powerful urge to _avoid_ him. I'm surprised at myself. I expected that when this time came I would practically run to him in relief, and I mentally prepared against bursting into his room like a melodramatic happy ending to a bad movie.

Did I somehow become cold and unfeeling, I wonder as I continue sitting beside the fireplace of the study. A room away behind a closed door, Watson and Holmes are conversing in garbled words that I can't distinguish. My eyes stray to the pale slash scars peeking out beneath my simple calico sleeves. The scars are raised on my skin, and they also raise memories of leaning against the bathroom wall in pain, nursing reality as the alcohol bliss wore away. It never really hurt as the cold razor went in and the warm blood poured out, I realize. It only hurts later, the next day, and the years and the lifetime after.

And Holmes' scars must be so similar to mine, and perhaps it's only now that the pain will begin to flare in him. We both have scars. I don't know if I can see so much of myself staring back at me.

And besides, I remind myself, I have no idea what I meant when I talked to Watson by Holmes' bedside this morning. I have no idea what I_ feel_. And I don't want to confront _him _about it, not when I'm a stranger from a hundred years in the future, and he's a detective from the past, and our paths can separate as quickly as they joined together.

"What do you feel for Sherlock Holmes, Ada?" Watson asked earlier. Suddenly my cheeks flush too warmly for a December afternoon as a few choice words now come unbidden to my mind, and I push them away, until only one word remains, and it echoes repeatedly in an icy whisper, "_Fragility_."

Fragility.

Separation.

My last dream is the most vivid one I have ever undergone, the woman with the red lips – Irene Adler or Madame Sosostris or whoever she is – telling me things I have known all along, but never wanted to accept. I must one day discover what happened to me and why I'm here. I must one day depart from Baker Street and Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes. There was a time when my daydreams were filled with ideas on how to escape back to my dreary little self-destructive life in San Francisco, with hardly a fleeting thought of the strange detective known as Sherlock Holmes, but now I'm not so sure.

From the bedroom comes a shout of impatience and a sharp admonishment, "My dear Holmes, frankly speaking, it will do your health no good for you to tell me about your dream."

"But Watson, it was unlike anything I have ever dreamt before!" Holmes' voice is huskier and weaker than usual, but filled with the same intensity he has so often displayed when hot on the trail. "At the forefront was a familiar woman, a woman with the face of an angel, if you will excuse the expression, and she taught me lessons in the middle of a deserted schoolroom. I addressed her as "Madame," and she ordered me to recite a long poem from a tattered textbook. Watson, do pull up the 'D' volume of my encyclopedia so that we may further explore the science of dreams—"

"You are _ill_, my good man."

"Nonsense, Watson, I am more refreshed than I have ever been. I vehemently protest your confining me to this bed for three days, but as my legs have the consistency of soft rubber, I have no choice but the obey you."

There is a small chuckle.

"Oh, dear Watson, do not laugh. I speak but the truth. As you know I am not prone to exaggeration nor modesty."

"I laugh, because I am relieved you seem to be in good spirits. For now, at least."

Holmes sighs lightly. "Watson. Watson... I recall that Ada had also experienced a most unique dream of her own," he says.

His sentence is like a single crystal marble being thrown into the air, and it hovers suspended, with bated breath. I have been halfheartedly perusing a stack of sepia press photographs of the Scotland Yard as I listened to Holmes and Watson's chat, but now I abandon the photos completely. They slide, softly splashing, from my knees to the carpet, and I find myself staring at the wooden panel of Holmes' closed door as if doing so can make me hear the detective more clearly.

There could have been a pause for one second or a hundred. But somehow Watson catches onto the conversation as an athlete would stand on tiptoe and reach for the ball. "And what was _Miss Cooper's_ dream?" he asks, delicately.

"It was a nightmare that was filled with images of the murdered unfortunate Mary Jane Kelly, of blinding white lights, and of a woman to whom Miss Cooper claimed she signed away her soul." He speaks as he always does, but the tone sounds too clinical to my ears, as though he's merely describing another case. "It happened on the second night she arrived at our humble flat, Watson, of the day the fifth Whitechapel murder was announced in the newspapers. After you left, I was interrupted from my studies by a piercing scream. The sound was chilling, and I bolted to your former domicile to find Miss Cooper futilely struggling underneath the covers, her eyes wild and haunted." His voice is more animated now. "Do you know, Watson, that her black tresses, when loose, reaches nearly to her waist? To a hedonist or any other pursuer of art, the manner that her hair cascades over her shoulders can only be described as _beautiful_. Have you noticed?"

My hand flies to the back of my head, where my hair is pulled in a low bun. I haven't forgotten that to Mrs. Hudson I'm still supposed to pass as a maid in this house, and the bun is the hairstyle for all maids... and respectable women.

"No, by God, I most certainly did _not_ notice that about her!" Watson is practically shouting. "I am surprised at you, Holmes."

"Surprised, my good doctor? It is merely – merely an observation, like any other." But the stutter, as tiny as it is, doesn't escape me. "And besides," he hurries on, "she has already shared our quarters for more than a month. It feels even to me that she has been living here forever, Watson, so strong is the power of illusion, and so willing is the human mind to follow. By now, it is nearly impossible _not_ to notice such particulars."

"I agree with you wholeheartedly. _And_... time is perhaps the reason she discovered _your _particular, Holmes. The seven percent solution."

Holmes is ominously silent.

Watson continues, "As cruel as it sounds, I heartily thank Miss Cooper for doing this to you, by the way. She has a woman's stubbornness and fire that will hopefully end your addiction to that dreaded syringe once and for all. She has thrown your worst vice into the disposal and you were powerless to stop her. I would to God that I had possessed as much conviction—"

"Thank you for the most illuminating summary, Watson," Holmes interrupts dryly. His good spirits sounds to have already withered, as Watson predicted. "I do not wish to state the obvious, but I was _not_ powerless to stop her, my dear Watson. Miss Cooper possesses a burning curiosity to the unknown, and even more dangerously, an ability to rummage through as many articles as is within arm's reach. When she snatched away my syringe from this very room, I did not fail to observe that most of the items on my desk had been disturbed, and that, strangely, my _clothing_ had also not been spared her little attack." He lets the words settle in for a while. "Women are intriguing, Watson, and their intents are almost opaque at times."

"Intent? Using your methods of deduction, I can say that she wanted to simply analyze the clothing of this century. We have settled on the theory that she is from the future, have we not?"

"Yes we have... but no, my instincts tell me that was not her intent..."

I wish they would carry over to a new topic. Thankfully, Holmes does.

"Watson, not only has she rummaged through my clothing, she has managed to find the photograph of _the _woman of whom you wrote in your overly sensational and dripping account of 'A Scandal in Bohemia.'"

"Irene Adler, Holmes?"

"Why must you refer to her by that name, Watson! Do not forget she is married, and now lives abroad," Holmes says with a tinge of irritation.

I take the bit of information easily, and I must admit I feel some sort of relief, some sort of closure to the mystery of the woman in the photograph. _She is now married_, I muse to myself, bending down to retrieve the scattered Scotland Yard clippings on the carpet. Where does she live now? Does she still retain her former passionate beauty, or did married life turn her into a tired, dried husk? What is her new name?

She is no longer a Mademoiselle, she is a Madame.

Madame Sosostris.

The name flutters through my mind absently, mingled with a thousand other thoughts, ready to be forgotten. The clock on the mantle clicks once. A placid second passes by, and outside a gust of wind blows a tiny crumb of dirt silently against the windowpane. Behind the closed door, Holmes and Watson's conversation has died down once again to an insignificant murmur.

Madame Sosostris.

Oh my_ God_.

The calm is over. I have bolted up in the chair, photographs pinwheeling around me. The clock ticks once more, another second passes, but I can no longer hear the sound through the blood roaring in my ears.

Madame Sosostris, Irene Adler, the woman with the red lips. I know the connection now. I _know_ it, even if the information is too jumbled up in my head for me to make any sense of it. Am I still dreaming or did the dream world pass into reality? I pinch myself on the back of my hand, and there is pain.

What was it that Sherlock Holmes said last night in his fever? "I saw _the_ woman in my dreams."

I asked him if he saw Irene.

No, she was _not _Irene, but a_ familiar_ woman with a foreign name, a name of Madame _something_...

Sosostris. Foreign name. It has to be.

The rational part of me is demanding just how a name of someone in _my_ head, a name that I have never even mentioned to Holmes, could possibly be in _his_ dream, but I've gone too far to stop. I'm thinking only of Madame Sosostris.

God, just who _is_ she? When was she first mentioned to me? I remember in my dreamscape a large, fog filled room, and a woman with red lips stepping out from the darkness, the mist swirling around her ankles and her heels tapping hollowly against the... _dance floor_.

The memory shifts, and now I'm at an event that happened so long ago I have trouble believing it ever occurred. That night at Joe's Club with Tony, the wine he offered me, and afterwards, the piece of paper he held in his hands as he gestured to the woman sitting in the shadows. That woman wanted me to autograph my story. The shadows parted, she lowered the slim cigarette from her mouth, and I could see that her lips were painted blood red.

That woman was named Madame Sosostris in my dream.

I grab on to the arm of the chair, but the images keep coming. And the mist and shadows suddenly disappear from my mind, and in the middle of the white headlights I see her _clearly_.

I am running to Holmes' desk, flinging open the drawer with shaking fingers and taking out a pair of scissors. Next to the scissors is a small, maroon matchbook. I rip the colored portion off, and cut from it a shape of a very flattened heart with no point at the bottom. Then, tossing the scissors away, I begin to pull out the leather file folders that have been neatly arranged in the far shelf of the desk, yanking off the strings and dumping the photographs and papers out from each one. They scatter to the desk, the chair, the ground, years of precious cataloguing flushed down the drain like garbage. I don't care.

Then I see it, the one photograph I am searching for, the one of Irene Adler. I slam it down on the desktop, and place the little paper shape I have hastily cut out – the little piece of almost cartoonish crimson lips – over Irene Adler's mouth.

And there she is, staring at me defiantly with those pale, large eyes, the woman with the red lips.

Simple logic guides me from there.

The woman with the red lips is Madame Sosostris. Madame Sosostris is the woman in Joe's Club.

Irene Adler is the woman I saw in Joe's Club.

To be continued...

Note: I'll let you hang on this one for a while, heh...


End file.
